


The Covenant

by Joyce (Alysswolf)



Series: Absalom [6]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Universe, Competant Villain, Conspiracy, Gen, Major Character Injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-28
Updated: 2013-05-28
Packaged: 2017-12-13 05:06:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/820335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alysswolf/pseuds/Joyce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jason and Mulder make a choice that will change their lives and the balance of power in the Consortium.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Covenant

**Author's Note:**

> "We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement." Isaiah 28:15

24 days after the attack  
Jason's Office

 

"Damn idiot," Jason muttered as he snapped the cover closed on the report. The Elders must have conducted a strenuous search to find the most pompous fool they could to head up their black ops unit. A bull in a china shop had more tact and subtlety than the man they placed in charge of keeping the lid on things.

"Hamilton," Jason called out in a deceptively calm voice.

"Yes sir?" his assistant answered politely before appearing in the doorway a moment later. He walked slowly over to Jason's desk and stood waiting for instructions.

"Remind me to send condolences to Major Dolby's family," Jason commented dryly as he handed Hamilton the heavily-marked report.

"Did the major die in an accident or in the line of duty?" Hamilton inquired seriously, his dark brown face betraying nothing more than mild curiosity. Jason stared icily at him. "For the card, sir," Hamilton added blandly.

Jason's eyes remained cool and impersonal, but his lips twitched in an infinitesimal smile.

"Oh, I think an accident; a promising career cut short and so on. Just write something appropriate for the occasion and send it out ... day after tomorrow should be soon enough."

"Yes sir. I'll select something appropriate," Hamilton assured Jason gravely.

Jason looked at his assistant standing poised and calm before him and wondered where his loyalties lay. The conspiracy was maturing more rapidly than anyone had counted on and the Syndicate, which was supposed to be in control, was anything but in control. The Elders were drunk on blood and revenge. 

Hamilton had remained loyal to him through the recent upheaval, but whether from choice or by orders, Jason could not discern. Hamilton remained impassively unconcerned by Jason's intense scrutiny. Either he was assured by his loyalty or blindly confident in promises of protection made by Jason's enemies.

Well, in four days, if his plans went awry, it would not matter. The smoker did not make idle threats. If Mulder had not been brought into the Project, his soul bought and paid for, Jason would outlive Mulder's assassination by the Elders by hours at best.

"That will be all, Hamilton," Jason waved a hand in dismissal. If his plans were successful, he would deal with the inscrutable Hamilton later. 

"Very good, sir." Hamilton turned to leave, almost pivoting with the crisp grace of a military drill instructor. As he reached the door, he paused. "I saw Bryson Tolliver the other day. He appears to have developed a most unusual interest in Agent Mulder's apartment."

Jason froze. Tolliver was the Elders' favorite assassin. Events were accelerating. For a moment, Jason felt the bottom drop out from under him and hung motionless in free fall on the lip of the precipice. 

"He looked most stressed. I took the liberty of introducing Lucy to him. She seemed most pleased by the gift. Mr. Tolliver will have a most entertaining vacation and will return in five days." Without another word, Hamilton left the office, carefully closing the door behind him without a sound.

Jason remembered to breathe and tried very hard not to laugh out loud. Poor Tolliver. The Fat Man, the chief of the Elders, had almost no sense of humor. Still, five days with Lucy might make any punishment worthwhile. If she didn't kill him first, of course, from sheer exhaustion.

Hamilton was proving to be a complex and surprising assistant. Taking him on as his aide had been little enough he could do for the son of a fallen soldier. Perhaps Hamilton would be a worthy recruit to the Smoker's list of allies. 

Time had been bought. Jason still had his friend's deadline to meet, but at least now he would not be racing an over-eager assassin for the prize. Jason flipped on the receiver to the listening device in Mulder's apartment. He would make his move tonight. Agent Scully had a doctor's appointment this afternoon. No doubt she would be reluctant to tell her partner the bad news, but it would not matter. Jason would be receiving a full copy of the X-rays and reports by courier before she left the hospital parking lot.

The board was set. Mulder's bishop and queen were in peril and the only way he could avoid checkmate was to sacrifice one of them. Jason pondered his unwitting opponent for a moment and wondered if Mulder's maverick brain would find a loophole in his carefully crafted strategy. Perhaps that was why Jonathan had been willing to take such risks to protect the boy. Fox's unorthodox genius had proved more than once to be a match for some of the Syndicate's best strategists, provoking a physical response to thwart Mulder's uncanny ability to penetrate the lies protecting the truth at the heart of the Conspiracy.

"Tonight you become an aware player in this game, Fox. You will see unfold the consequences of your action or inaction. I think I understand Jonathan at last. We are gamblers, all of us, risking everything on the unknown, the incalculable responses you make to imminent threats," Jason said softly as he leaned back to listen to the quiet sounds of a silent man moving about his home.

"Check, Mr. Mulder, and mate, I hope," Jason added in a whisper that might have been a prayer to the devil that held his own soul in checkmate.

**************

Mulder's apartment later that afternoon

 

Fox Mulder wandered about aimlessly in his apartment. He was restless. After weeks of being penned up in the hospital he wanted to be out and moving around, but Scully had made it very clear that he was still recuperating and needed to rest. Hell, he'd been doing nothing but resting for over three weeks. He was bored with resting. Still, he supposed she had a point. The speech therapist had been optimistic that, with care, his voice should return with only a gravel huskiness to remind him how close he came to permanent disability retirement. Jogging was probably not on the short list of activities he was allowed to indulge in.

Part of his problem was that the apartment was entirely too clean. Scully had apparently decided to take action against the comfortable clutter he amassed around his life. He really couldn't blame her. For Scully, neatness was right up there behind loyalty and duty as cardinal virtues. Organized chaos was the term he preferred, but he supposed that was a bit on the optimistic side. In the weeks before his attack, he had not even kept up the pretence of organizing the clutter, except for the stacks of files and clippings on his desk - those were kept in rigidly controlled piles ranked according to their usefulness in his search for a cure for Scully.

If he listened carefully, he could almost imagine he could hear the death wails of the dust bunnies as they were ruthlessly exterminated. Some of those dust balls had been with him since he first moved in; they were like old friends. For that matter, they survived a hell of a lot longer than most of his fish. 

He felt like a stranger in his own apartment. It would probably take him days, if not weeks, to find everything again. Contemplating the hassle of trying to outguess Scully, he tried to work up some irritation, but it fell flat. As childish as it was, he wanted to be irritated with her because then he could forget how worried he was.

"Just a routine follow-up exam," she had said. "Nothing to worry about. I feel fine," the familiar litany continued, fooling no one, but offering her a comfortable shield against his blatant concern. 

She did look fine, better than he had seen her look in months, but that did not reassure the ice-field that swallowed his heart when she told him the doctor wanted to see her again. 

Fox Mulder was not a man who believed in miracles, yet one had been bestowed on Scully seemingly from nowhere. Now it appeared that someone decided that the miracle was a mistake. For the first time in his adult life, Mulder wished he could find comfort in prayer. He maintained a completely neutral attitude about the existence of God. Scully believed. He tried to find comfort in the reflection of her faith, but doubted if God really cared. If he did, then how could he allow someone as good and honorable as Scully to suffer so much evil? 

Frustrated and unable to sit still for long, Mulder continued to wander around his apartment. Finally he could take being cooped up no longer. Better to risk Scully's wrath than go insane. At least the weather was mild and unseasonably warm. Still, he grabbed his leather jacket and pulled it on over the light black sweater with the high neck that concealed the bandages. This morning, in the hospital, he had taken off the bandages and stared at the wound that wrapped around his throat like a snake. Despite the surgeon's best efforts, there would be a scar; a brand scored into his skin to remind him daily of the unknown assassin who struck him down, then held him tenderly as he drowned in his own blood.

No doubt the nurse informed Scully of his action. He knew Scully liked to enlist his nurses as her eyes and ears when she had to be away. She had said nothing when she arrived to take him home, but he saw her eyes flit for an instant to the soft skin-tone bandage on his neck when she thought he wasn't looking. He hid in the silence and the moment passed. What was there to say? Another scar, another step closer to the day when death would grow tired of playing and claim him. Now they had a visible, constant reminder of time pressing in on them. He wished he knew whether this was a good thing or whether it would tear them apart.

The late afternoon sun felt warm on his face as he emerged from his apartment building. He paused for a moment, looking down the street towards the path he usually took when the urge to run took him; the path he had taken a cold, slushy night just over three weeks ago. Mulder bit his lip as the memory of a flashing blade and the warm sting of blood and air spilled from his throat onto the icy slush of the street.

Not that way, not yet, not until he could run that memory into the ground. Shrugging off the flashback, he turned to walk towards the small park nearby. The short four block walk, even taken slowly, exhausted him.

"Shit," he grumbled in a hoarse raspy whisper as he collapsed onto a convenient bench. OK, Scully was right. I don't have the strength of a two-day-old kitten, Mulder groused to himself.

With an effort he controlled his breathing to avoid gasping and straining his healing throat. Slow and easy, breathe in deep, exhale slowly, he chanted mentally as he slowed down his breathing into an even rhythm. Damn rehab sessions had a few good tips, he acknowledged grudgingly.

A shadow fell on him and he looked up to see a young man dressed in jeans and a heavy sweater standing in front of him looking at him with a strange expression. The hair on the back of Mulder's neck prickled and he began to tense. He was in no shape for a fight, but the instinctive response to danger kicked in nonetheless. The young man noted Mulder's alert response and smiled a wintry smile.

Without a word, the man dropped a bulky manila envelope in Mulder's lap and walked off. When he was about ten feet away, he turned and looked at Mulder sitting there uneasily holding the package. Mulder looked up into his eyes and saw cool appraisal and a distant, amused respect. With a nod at the package, the man turned and walked away.

Now what?, Mulder wondered as his hands felt the shape of a video tape and the stiff edges of some sort of heavy paper. He held the package gingerly, almost as if it was about to explode in his hands. It was very tempting to toss the package in a nearby trashcan and walk away, but his curiosity was aroused. Somebody was going to a great deal of trouble; somebody who knew him well enough to know that once his curiosity was tripped, it would be almost impossible for him not to examine the contents of the package. A perfect trap with a messy explosion as the payoff would seem the logical conclusion, but this didn't feel like that kind of trap. Why go to so much trouble, when a simple gunshot would cause less of a stir and be a lot quieter?

As he slowly got up for the walk home, Mulder looked around for any sign that he was being followed. If he was, they were very, very good, he admitted. Then again, it was a fair guess that he would head home to examine the package in the safety of his own apartment. Mulder felt like the quarry in a very elaborate hunt with a hunter who knew him too well for comfort. He did not like the feeling. He was tired of being the quarry - just for once he'd like to be the hunter.

**************

In his car across the park, Jason watched Mulder begin his slow journey home. His high-powered binoculars caught the nervous twitch of Mulder's fingers as they played with the envelope. So far, so good. The end-game was proceeding as planned. Jason had resisted the temptation to be the one to deliver the bishop's checkmate in person. He would have to content himself with knowing that it was his hand that lay around Skinner's soul. Hamilton was the better choice - an unknown and less likely to provoke a public scene.

Hamilton had his own orders and Jason had no reason to doubt that he would carry them out with equal skill and dispassionate attention to detail. Misplaced records, the normal chaotic inefficiency of modern medical bureaucracy should be sufficient to occupy the agent for several hours.

"You are alone, Fox. Until I give the word, you have no one to turn to, but me. Alone, you are vulnerable. Alone, you are mine," Jason whispered as Mulder turned the corner onto his own street.

**************

Mulder's legs were trembling by the time he slowed from a fast walk to climb the steps to the entrance to his apartment building. An irrational fear had taken hold of him, driving him to push his tired body to its limits. Like a fool, he had left his cell-phone at home. Consumed by a need to speak with Scully, to reassure himself that she was indeed fine, he had defied doctor's orders and common sense. The fast walk was a pitiful parody of the long loping strides of a runner, but it still left him shaky and gasping for breath. Despite his efforts to control his breathing, his lungs were heaving, sucking in air which burned in his throat.

For once, the interminably slow elevator ride up to the fourth floor was a relief. When the doors opened again, he had his breathing under control and managed a steady, if slow, walk down the hall. On the off-chance that Scully had returned early and was waiting for him, he was determined to show no outward signs of his exertion.

Once inside his apartment, Mulder tore open the envelope. Despite his confidence that the envelope was not a trap, he could not prevent a slight wince as the paper tore nor a sigh of relief when nothing happened. At least Scully would not come back to find him splattered all over his nice clean apartment. 

Tilting the envelope, Mulder poured out onto his coffee table a video tape, a heavy parchment envelope and a small velvet bag. The video tape was unlabeled and, after turning it over several times in his hands, trying to see any identifying marks, Mulder carefully set it aside. The black velvet bag contained an oddly shaped object which turned out to be a white chess piece. Mulder stared at the elaborately carved representation of a robed man wearing a bishop's miter and wielding a sword, trying to remember if he had ever seen a chess set containing such a remarkably crafted piece. He played chess badly, though on occasion his erratic and often senseless moves had stymied a more proficient player. He knew enough to recognize this piece as a bishop and understood its moves and importance to the overall game, but why would someone send it to him? 

Carefully setting the bishop on the table, he slit open the parchment envelope. The letter inside was brief and succinct, written in a gothic style of penmanship popular forty years ago.

Mr. Mulder:

King's bishop is in danger. The tape provides ample evidence. My knight now threatens the White Queen. Think well. Consider well. Your move is coming up. Be ready.

The letter was unsigned. Mulder held the letter gingerly and pondered its meaning. If he held the bishop in his hands, that must mean that whoever wrote this note considered him to be the White King. If so, then the only queen he could possibly have would be Scully.

Mulder dove for his cell-phone, frantically hitting the speed dial. Six, eight, ten rings - each one tearing out a chunk of his heart.

After fifteen rings he gave up. In the ensuing silence he could hear his heart beat. There must be a dozen good reasons why Scully wasn't answering her phone. She'll laugh when I tell her how I panicked over something so silly, he assured his flagging optimism.

"What do you want from me?" he asked the empty air as he stood up and went over to stare out the window. Why not just kill him and get it over with. Why the elaborate charade? "Just fucking come out and tell me for christsake..." His fist pounded against the window frame in slow, angry blows that shook the glass.

Mulder's anger drained out of him as he realized the futility of both his anger and his demand for answers. It wasn't his move. He was at the mercy of the invisible player on the other side. He could only react to his opponent's moves. Mulder fumed at his helplessness, but until more of the strategy was revealed, he had to play a passive role.

"If you harm her in any way... I swear, I'll find you. I'll kill you in front of the whole fucking world if I have to. Do you hear me?" The cold venom in Mulder's voice left no doubt he meant every word. The raspy tone gave his words a malevolent twist.

Anger boiled up again, not the hot rage that usually drove him to foolish ill-considered acts, but an icy fury that purged his soul of mercy. 

A sharp ring startled him. A second ring shook him out of his confusion and sent him lunging for his cell-phone.

"Hey, partner." 

Scully's voice. Her blessed, exasperated, tired, miraculous voice poured into Mulder's ear like rain on a thirsty land. Thank you god, Mulder's heart whispered.

"Scully," Mulder rasped into the phone, relief warring with his waning fury frustrating his attempt to speak slow and evenly.

"Afraid I'm going to be late. There's been an accident and traffic is at a complete standstill," Scully explained.

"You OK?" Mulder blurted, his voice breaking annoyingly on the last word.

"I'm fine. I'm about six cars behind the accident. I was just seeing if anyone needed assistance. There are no injuries, but the road is completely blocked. Looks like I'm going to be here for awhile," Scully added with a resigned sigh.

Taking a deep, calming breath, Mulder asked the question that he most feared. 

"What about the doctor?"

There was a pause, not long, but just long enough for Mulder's heart to freeze and his soul to wither.

"I'm fine, Mulder. We'll talk when I get there. Don't worry," Scully said reassuringly, but just fast enough to tell Mulder that everything wasn't fine and she didn't want to have to tell him something over the phone.

"Sure," he responded trying to sound as if she had convinced him. He doubted if he was doing any better job than she had on him. Fools, both of them, to think that they could hide behind words. "Take out, OK?"

"Sure. Your pick. Just remember, no heavy spices. With luck, I should be out of this mess soon. Give me about an hour," Scully advised, her voice soothing and too normal sounding for Mulder's jangled nerves.

"No Indonesian, then?" Mulder tried to sound pouty, but with the raspiness in his throat, he wasn't sure the trick would work. A chuckle rewarded him.

"No Indonesian. You can try to scorch my mouth some other time."

"Fine, I'll find something non-inflammatory," Mulder felt his voice weaken and mentally swore. He wanted to keep Scully on the line, to reassure him that she was fine and wasn't in any danger.

"Hang up, now, Mulder. Remember, you are not supposed to overdo it," she ordered firmly. "I'll be there soon," she promised as she hung up.

"I'm counting on it," Mulder whispered as he pressed the power off key. 

Whoever was playing this game with his life was very good. He now had an hour to fret about what could have happened to Scully and what she wasn't telling him about the doctor's visit. He might as well be damned for a sheep as for a lamb. The video might contain some answers, maybe even some hint as to who his mysterious adversary was. This scenario was too complex, too distant for Cancer Man. Who else wanted him boxed in?

**************

"Sir?" Hamilton's voice sounded tense, almost irritated, if Jason was any judge. If the situation wasn't so critical, this uncharacteristic emotional display by his aide would intrigue him.

"Yes," Jason answered with a marked brusqueness. His attention was concentrated on the questions Mulder was asking thin air rather than on whatever was irritating his most able assistant.

"She left the hospital before I got there. That fool doctor gave her the lab results without insisting that she remain for further tests." Hamilton's tone left no doubt of his opinion of the laggardly doctor. 

One part of Jason's mind resolved on a suitable accident to remove an incompetent link in their organization. The doctor enjoyed skiing. Good enough. Such a tragedy. A remarkable career cut short by a careless accident. The only question that now remained was whether Hamilton would also have to be attended to.

"Then where.... ?" Jason's mind frantically shifted gears. Where was Dr. Scully? If she were free, then he would have to rearrange his plans for Mulder. Alternatives, hasty contingency plans sprang to mind, shuffled through for plausibility and workability.

"I'm afraid I will need transportation, sir. I acted as I saw fit, sir. I think I can guarantee that she will be quite occupied for at least an hour, most likely two. "Hamilton sounded as if he were expecting a reprimand, yet managed to sound contrite without cringing or whining.

Jason's eyebrow shot up and he straightened up from the half-slouch he had slid into while concentrating on what he thought was an impending crisis. His assistant was proving to be a veritable magician.

"Explain."

"I ascertained the subject's route and by a certain judicious disregard for routine traffic regulations, I managed to overtake her and advance to a position several cars ahead of hers. I then took action to immobilize her, along with several hundred other people. I do sincerely regret the necessity, sir, but the Jaguar was driven by a man most unsuited to handle such a distinguished car." 

A chuckle escaped Hamilton's effort to present a clear, concise, professional report. Jason smiled in response. Someday he must remember to tell Hamilton that it was perfectly acceptable to laugh at the foibles of those they chose as instruments in their grand plan. 

"I believe I have also received my first death threat, sir. A most intriguing experience. The man was almost incoherent, but I believe he intends to either eviscerate me or sue me into penury. I suspect I bagged a lawyer." Hamilton was definitely chuckling now. Jason allowed himself another smile and made a note to see that the tables were turned on this lawyer. A bit of penury was good for the soul - other men's souls, of course.

"Oh, by the way, I took the liberty of faxing Dr. Scully's medical report to you from the doctor's office. I trust it is all you hoped it would be, sir."

"Hamilton, you are a marvel. As soon as you can detach yourself from the results of your ingenious tactical maneuver, report to my office. Well done," Jason added with warm sincerity. His plan was intact; warped a mite, but still operable. If he was successful, he would have to do something very nice for Hamilton. If he failed... Well, whoever inherited him would be getting a rare treasure, Jason thought ruefully. 

**************

Fifteen minutes later, Mulder knew it really didn't matter who was behind this game. Skinner as a bishop to his king was not an image he had ever considered, most days he felt he was the one jumping to Skinner's tune. Someone, however, obviously had an over-inflated view of his place in the grand scheme of things. If he was so fucking important, then why was he usually left three steps behind the truth with no evidence and certainly nothing that could threaten even the shadow of the conspiracy that existed within or around his government.

He refused to believe that the events depicted were real, but they were damning. The tape purported to be a surveillance video that caught a shadowy figure entering some research facility, destroying key data and coolly executing an MP and two lab technicians before setting off an explosion. Just before the tape blurred and went blank, the camera caught the figure pulling off his mask to reveal A. D. Skinner. 

Rewinding the tape and watching carefully, Mulder could pick out familiar movements and mannerisms that would clearly identify the masked figure as Skinner to anyone who knew him well. Without other hard evidence to back it up, this tape would not be enough to convict Skinner of any crime, but it would seriously compromise his position. Mulder knew that the scenario, minus the executions, was plausible. He knew about Skinner's deal with the devil. His stubborn pursuit of the truth had led him to Skinner and he literally stumbled onto the deal. Skinner didn't explain why and Mulder never asked. The obvious reason, Scully's desperate need for a cure, did not need an explanation. He saw it in Skinner's eyes when he lied about the gun; he was part of the reason Skinner had given that smoking bastard power over him. Guilt and an odd sense of fellowship had led him to compromise the law to protect his boss from the trap closing in on him. 

What he couldn't figure out was why this tape was given to him? If his adversary thought for a moment that he would use this tape against Skinner, then he was a fool. That was unlikely. The noose constricting around his neck was not the result of a fool's labor. 

A warning, then? A threat. Someone believed that he cared enough for his superior to take this tape as a warning. 

His move. 

Mulder thought back over the rules of chess and tried to come up with a visual image of the situation. The bishop and the queen were threatened - which meant that in the next move either one would be swept from the board. If the next move was his, that meant he could prevent or delay that removal. That he would act was a given, so why the elaborate set-up?

The answer came with a suddenness that sent Mulder sagging back into the couch. Of course, his move would have to be to place himself between the threat and Scully and Skinner. His adversary wanted him to offer himself up like some damn sacrificial lamb. Maybe he got off on the power or maybe he just wanted to see him squirm - it didn't matter. Mulder knew that he was going to have to play out this game, but not necessarily by the rules.

Looking at his watch, Mulder made a quick call to his favorite bistro and threw himself on the mercy of the manager who laughed and promised to deliver a tasty meal fit for a man whose throat could barely tolerate black pepper, much less the lava-quality spiciness he usually enjoyed.

The condemned man would at least eat a hearty meal, he quipped to himself as he pondered his next move. Something unexpected, he thought, something no sane man would consider.

Mulder grimaced and, with a shrug, he invited chaos into the game. He could see no way out except to trust in the random kindness of pure chance. Stepping out into the void and trusting that something was out there to catch him was not an uncommon feeling. It was an old familiar sensation and he loathed the feeling each and every time he did it. Now there would be no Scully waiting across the chasm to catch his out-stretched arms - just blind chance that somehow, someway he could stop himself before he hit bottom.

"Damn, I hate gambling."

************

Mulder waited, impatiently, which was the only way he knew how to wait. Too much time to think, at least with his thoughts as dark as they were right now. Someone had profiled him as neatly as he was accustomed to profile serial killers. He had to assume his phone was tapped and that he was under active surveillance. The idea made his skin crawl. 

He was tempted to turn on one of his raunchier and noisier videos - give whoever was watching him a thrill. He was certain that whoever set this trap knew him well enough to expect such a reaction. Should he give them what they expected? He considered this for a moment while idly recreating some of his clutter. No, it was time he started making moves against the pattern set down for him. Scanning the channels, Mulder let a closely fought soccer match provide background noise as he rambled around his apartment.

An hour passed, dinner arrived and was in the oven staying warm. Still no Scully. Mulder battled an urge to call Scully again. Instead he paced and tried to profile himself as his enemies must have done. It was no secret that losing Scully would cripple him. Nor would it take a genius to predict how far he was willing to go to save her. What was interesting, however, was the tape implicating Skinner. His unseen opponent apparently had reason to believe that Skinner was a bargaining chip.

As he considered the patterns laid out before him, Mulder sensed that the net closing around him did not have the feel of Cancer Man's usual tactics; this was a bold, direct assault aimed at driving him into a corner. Mulder was certain that if Cancer Man knew he had conspired with Skinner to extract him from the frame-up, his soul would have been in Cancer Man's fist weeks ago.

The hell with whoever was listening, Mulder thought. If the man didn't already know he was angry, upset and more than a bit frantic, then he wasn't the opponent Mulder thought he was. He treated his eavesdroppers with a rich banquet of curses directed at the man behind this strategy. Scully's little delay, coming hard on the heels of her visit to the doctor and the mysterious delivery of the tape damning Skinner, could not be a coincidence. His opponent was demonstrating his power to control the variables in his life. 

And doing a fine job of it, too, he grumbled to himself. He needed no reminding that his life was now intertwined with Scully's so tightly that the ripples spreading out from events affecting her unsettled his world.

Punching up the games pack on his computer, Mulder activated the never-before-used chess program and stared at the pieces, pondering ways and means of extricating himself from this trap. 

A loud ring, repeated, broke his concentration. Out of habit he grabbed his cell-phone, but the ringing continued. A hasty search of his desk revealed his phone, vibrating with each strident ring. Mulder hesitated, trying to control his breathing. He felt the presence of the hunter coming to check on what his trap had caught. Licking his dry lips and forcing his breathing into a slow, even rhythm, he picked up the receiver just as his answering machine clicked on.

"Hello. Leave a message." His mechanical voice droned inpatient entreaty.

"I know you are there, Fox."

Mulder froze in the act of answering. His memory flashed back to a frozen gutter, blood drowning him as he listened to this voice telling him he was dying.

"Come now, Fox." Jason sighed audibly. 

"I'm here," Mulder growled. 

"Good. We need to talk, Fox. You have received my messages. I have every confidence in your ability to deduce the probable moves." Jason's voice was coolly polite, but seemed to hold a note of regret. Mulder wondered why his tormenter bothered feeling anything; did the hunter offer sympathy to its prey?

"Actually, I fail to see why you bothered sending me that tape. Should I be concerned or is this your way of telling me that I'll be getting a new boss in a few days?" Mulder struggled to make his voice as bland as possible and cursed as it broke several times. 

Jason chuckled. "Excellent, Fox, you retain your legendary wit. I am relieved to find that your unfortunate accident has not dented your most annoying habit of making a joke out of extremely serious topics." A hint of ice in his tone sent a shiver down Mulder's spine.

"However, time is not your ally. The park where you were given the tape - in fifteen minutes. Unless you are forfeiting the game?"

The dial tone hit Mulder before he could muster a response. 

"Damn!" he swore as he slammed down the phone. If Scully arrived while he was out, he might have more to worry about than a deal with the devil. "Fuck it," he spat out the words as he scribbled a quick, slightly vague note and grabbed his jacket. Locking the door behind him, he folded the note and tacked it to his door. He doubted if it would salve an angry Scully, but he had promised not to run off. At least she'd know he had remembered the promise, even if he didn't keep it. Cold comfort.

**************

 

Early evening dusk had swallowed up the park in shadows. The feeble light from a few street lamps barely penetrated the darkness. Appropriate, Mulder thought. Whoever his nemesis was seemed to enjoy these melodramatic touches. The warm breeze of the afternoon had been replaced by a cold wind that plucked at his coat, seeking a way into his soul.

"Punctual. Good," Jason commented dryly from a nearby shadow. He smiled as Mulder started then turned slowly in his direction. Hell was in Mulder's eyes and, for a moment, Jason wondered who was damning whom tonight.

"Your tone indicated a certain urgency," Mulder commented, trying to maintain a nonchalance he did not feel. His throat spasmed and he cursed as his tone wavered uneasily between baritone and husky bass.

"For you, perhaps." Jason stepped farther back into the shadow, inviting Mulder to join him in the dark. Mulder hesitated. Memory, vivid piercing memory flashed back to another dark night, a flashing blade and darkness rushing in to claim him. Anger, fear surged up, choking him, making his hands twitch with the urge to rip this man's throat out. He felt the weight of his back-up pistol laying heavy in his jacket pocket. It would be so easy, so satisfying, to kill this son-of-a-bitch who had tried to kill him three weeks ago with cold casualness.

With an effort, he controlled his urge to explode into violence, to repay the weeks of agony in a single glorious moment of revenge. His heart wanted to kill, but his mind told him that the situation called for using his brains, not his emotions.

"If I'm to die, I think I prefer to do it here in the light," Mulder replied softly, carefully keeping his voice low and even. He didn't think the entire purpose of this charade had been to lure him to his death. Too obvious a ploy. Still, it wouldn't hurt to have his opponent underestimate him a trifle.

Jason chuckled. He was beginning to see the attraction working with Mulder had had for Jonathan. Fox Mulder managed to combine brilliance and naivete along with a dark current of violence in a surprising mix that raised the art of doing the unexpected to an art form.

"If I had wanted you dead, your partner and Assistant Director Skinner would be writing your eulogy right now." Jason paused and considered his opponent for a moment. He gestured to the bench Mulder had occupied earlier. Half in shadow, lit by a single street lamp twenty feet away, it offered a compromise. He watched Mulder as he glanced at the bench, then back at his half-hidden form before turning abruptly and walking over to sit down.

Jason walked over to sit on the opposite end of the bench, just out of arm's reach. It occurred to him that he and Mulder were like two great cats meeting in neutral territory, each warily waiting for the other to make the first move.

Mulder sat stiffly, glaring at the man who had tried to kill him and was now apparently intent on blackmailing him into some unknown action. His anger was thick in the air between them, but he held himself rigidly in check. His own life he was perfectly willing to endanger in bravado escapades, but Scully's life, and even Skinner's, now depended on his self-control.

"I was wrong," Jason mused aloud as he stared into the darkness, apparently oblivious of the man beside him. "Killing you would have been a mistake and a grievous waste of potential."

Mulder waited silently. He wanted to make a smart-ass quip, something to lessen the tension, but he didn't trust his voice not to betray him. Do not show fear. He repeated this mantra over and over as his mind feverishly attempted to build a profile of this strange man. Might as well profile the devil, he thought, but knew that even if Jason were Satan himself, he would still try to profile him. It was ultimately what he did best.

"I came to realize this, with a bit of help, of course. Now I realize what a very old comrade knew years ago. You are simply too valuable to waste, Fox Mulder," Jason observed as he swiveled around to face his opponent.

"You called me out here to tell me this? I'm flattered," Mulder replied, pleased that he had managed to find that low baritone range that the speech therapist had recommended.

"Not entirely, but I felt it was best to clear the air of our prior meeting. You are a rare bird, Agent Mulder. One of my very few mistakes." Jason smiled and let the hint of the knife echo in his tone. Despite the obvious control Mulder had on his emotions, Jason enjoyed the shudder that rippled in his eyes.

"You have viewed the tape," Jason said confidently. "And understand the rules of the game you so brashly entered four years ago. Now we are in the closing moments of play. Your queen and your bishop are in jeopardy. You know the options. Either choose one to take the fall for you or acknowledge checkmate. It has been an interesting game, but we grow bored with it. Now it is time you moved on to other, higher games." Jason sounded languid, almost bored by the necessity to recite the details of the trap he had so cunningly crafted. Only his eyes glittering in the pallid light betrayed the hunter's excitement in the kill.

Mulder held his breath. There had always been a faint hope that he had misread the clues, that Scully's and Skinner's future did not depend on him alone. He was tired of bearing the weight of others' lives on his shoulders. So many deaths lay in his wake, so many failures. He couldn't bear the weight of any more, especially that of these two - the woman he loved yet would not admit he loved, even in the whispered silences of his heart, and the man who was the older brother he never had, who badgered him to behave even while giving him a rock to put his back up against when he didn't.

He sensed this man was not quite as calm as he wanted Mulder to believe. Just the faintest tension around his eyes and a stare that would freeze hell told Mulder that his surrender was far more vital than he was being told. The stakes then would seem to be as high for his opponent as for himself. There had to be some advantage to be gained from this insight. Perhaps not enough to halt his headlong slide into hell, but maybe enough to bargain the terms of his damnation.

"Why go to all this trouble?" Mulder flung the question that had tormented him since he stumbled onto the conspiracy. Why was he so important? Why hadn't he ended up with a bullet in the back of his head years ago?

Jason smiled coldly. How typically Mulder to ask questions while standing on the brink of disaster. Trust him also to ask a question Jason had no answer for. Damn the man, his mind and whatever hidden role he had in Jonathan's grand scheme.

"The why does not concern you. Surrender or sacrifice are your only two options." Jason remained implacable, refusing to be pushed into showing his own ignorance. He remembered something Jonathan had once said about Mulder. Give him no room to maneuver and you had a chance of controlling him; just that, a chance. Allow him the smallest room to twist or turn and he'd be off the hook and away before you could react.

"Why should I just hand myself over to you so easily? The tape is not admissible evidence and ... " Mulder had to pause and steady his voice before he could go on. Way to go, champ, he thought. Nothing like handing your enemy the fucking gun and painting a target on yourself. "Scully's cancer is in remission."

"What the gods give, they also take away, Mr. Mulder. Skinner is our tool, to be used or broken at our will ...as you well know. As for Agent Scully. Let's just say we take an extremely personal interest in her case. She has proven to be a most resilient experiment with results far beyond anything we had calculated. Still, all experiments must come to an end ... unless new data or sufficient motivation to continue is supplied," Jason purred with a razor-edge to his voice. Time to show the claws and the fangs directly. Very past time to show Fox Mulder who was Alpha Male here.

"You might find this interesting reading," Jason said as he carefully laid down a manila folder on the seat between them. He watched as Mulder's eye flickered helplessly to the proffered report then were pulled back up to stare rigidly into the darkness. The man was vibrating like an over-taut violin string.

"Well, then, let me summarize for you. Apparently, with as little reason as the sudden remission, the cancer has reactivated. We know so little, after all, after the mysteries of human biology. I'm sure Dr. Scully would be pleased to know how valuable her contributions are in expanding that knowledge," Jason commented smoothly.

He bristled angrily at the casual dismissal of Scully's importance. She was not somebody's lab rat, to be used and discarded. She was a brilliant, honorable, caring woman who fought at his side against monsters, human and inhuman, without question and without hesitation. 

As his eyes flicked over the deadly threat concealed in an insignificant manila folder, his soul shuddered with the premonition of death creeping in to swallow Scully up; severing his lifeline to humanity. He dared not think about the implications of the return of the cancer - not if he hoped to remain sane and coherent enough to try to find a way out of this trap. 

Without realizing it, Mulder's lips pulled back in a snarl as he fought his hatred of the men who reduced human beings to the level of impersonal experiments. How could he voluntarily join such men without polluting the sacrifice of so many lives; without betraying Scully's struggle against what had been done to her?

"You have no choice, really. Kill me and the plan goes forward. The only difference is that you will die as well. Is your petty vengeance worth the lives of two innocent people? If so, I am here. Take your best shot," Jason said as he laid his hands flat on his knees, empty of any weapon. The storm was rising. Whether he would ride it or be consumed by it hung in the balance of one man's self-restraint.

Damn, Mulder cursed. He wished he felt a whole lot more noble about selling his soul, but instead he felt soiled, filthy, unclean. There was nothing noble about giving in to evil, but the alternative did not bear thinking about. He had to say the words, betray the man Scully thought him to be if he was to have any chance of saving her or himself. Betrayal was the only option left open to him. The only uncertainty remaining was exactly who he would end up betraying. Well, at least his enemies would be getting a soul already badly smudged. It shouldn't hurt that much to take the final step into ultimate evil.

Hate burned darkly in his eyes, causing Jason to stiffen slightly. Mulder hovered on the cusp, savoring the last seconds of freedom, wondering if it wouldn't just be better to kill this man and then himself in a final act of defiance. It would be the perfectly chaotic thing to do. Break every rule. Rewrite the game on his own terms. He smiled, a cold and deadly smile that peeled back the layers of his humanity to reveal the raging beast he kept chained inside.

"You may find I'm not what any of you expected," he growled, deliberately allowing his voice to roughen and break into a bass rumble. For just a moment longer he would savor the taste of being his own man, capable of ordering his own destiny. Maybe if he had surrendered to the violence within him long ago, he would not now be sitting here in the dark preparing to hand over his soul to his enemies.

Jason remained silent, though watchful. Unconsciously he cataloged his defenses. This was the point where all predictions were useless. The moment in the hunt where prey and hunter could switch places in an instant. His blood raced and burned and he knew that the savage looked out of his eyes as he waited. This was the moment when he savored life to its fullest. He rode the storm he had raised.

Slowly, deliberately, Mulder looked Jason in the eye, then lowered his eyes and nodded once. When he looked back up, it was with a weary, resigned expression that he hoped masked the faint ember of hope he nursed in the shadows of his soul. 

"Checkmate," he said quietly.

"Acknowledged," Jason replied brusquely. He felt his breathing begin to slow down as he came down from the adrenaline rush. The storm had responded to his bidding. The game was his ... maybe. The victory had come too easily. Where were the rants, the absurd posturing, the fury Fox Mulder was capable of? This defeat smelled like a diversion; it lacked the rich aroma of despair and final capitulation.

No matter. Despair would come soon enough. Once Mulder realized that there was no other choice, but the one he offered, his surrender would be genuine. Jason actually preferred this gesture of rebellion. It made the final victory that much sweeter and much more certain.

"Scully?" Mulder blurted out his concern as if knowing that just her name held all the questions he ever needed to ask now that his life was no longer his own.

"I believe a new doctor, one you will recommend, will find that the test results are confused and, upon further tests, will discover that the cancer has indeed gone into remission after all." Jason replied casually. It would be a small gesture to seal Mulder to his bargain. He found it quite interesting that Mulder did not inquire after Skinner. It might be amusing to see how the dynamics of that relationship evolved. Once Mulder had been bound irrevocably to their side, perhaps he should be given the other end of Skinner's leash.

"We'll talk in more detail later. Right now, I believe you have a dinner date with the tardy Agent Scully. If you hustle, you will just beat her home," Jason repressed a chuckle at the flare of fear/anger in Mulder's eyes as he realized, again, how closely they were being monitored. Good, let him believe that they could control every moment of his life and he would be easier to bend to their will.

Mulder stood up, biting back the bitter words he wanted to hurl at his man who held his soul so casually in his hands. Damnation hurt. He felt shredded. Only one thought remained clear - Scully must not know. She must never know that his betrayal of their quest and her sprang from his desperate need to save her life. 

Turning his back on Jason, Mulder almost wished he could hope for the executioner's bullet. Death would be a hell of a lot easier than lying to Scully. He walked slowly back home, unable to gather enough energy or will to move faster. Even knowing that his slow pace guaranteed that Scully would beat him to his apartment, he trudged slower and slower with each step. He was tempted to provoke an argument, to drive her away so he wouldn't have to endure an evening deceiving her that he was still the Mulder she trusted and respected. Then he realized that this was probably just the first of many nights and days of deception and knew that delaying the inevitable lies would not make them any easier to bear.

The light in his apartment told him that Scully had indeed beaten him home. He imagined for a moment her anger, then her resignation at his absence. Now, she would be waiting to hear whatever fantastic explanation he tried to come up with before wringing the truth out of him with a glance and the slight upturned curl of an eyebrow. 

"Not this time, Scully," Mulder whispered as he stood on the sidewalk looking up at his window. There, barely visible except as a shadow of movement, he thought he saw Scully moving around. Time to face the music. Time to come up with a twofold lie to persuade her that he was merely truant, not traitor. Time enough for truth later, if his last ditch strategy failed and he was so used to damnation that her anger would not penetrate a heart turned to ice. 

With a determined shrug of his shoulders, Mulder cloaked himself in the shadow of the man he had been minutes before. The only chance he had, the only chance she had, lay in his ability to convince her of the lie. At all costs she must remain aloof from this game. He would make his move, alright - just not the one he agreed to. Samantha, if she were here, could have warned his opponent that her brother was not above cheating if the stakes were high enough. 

Cheating hell ... now there's a challenge no sane man would try. Then again, sanity has never been one of my strongest suits, he thought as he paused and took a deep breath outside his door. Plastering a rueful smile on his lips, Mulder braced himself for trial by Scully and walked into his apartment.

************

As he expected, Scully was waiting for him. One look at her expression told him all he needed to know - worry and irritation blended with weariness - her Mulder-look. Why did he always manage to end up hurting the one person he would die to protect? As he carefully hung up his jacket, Mulder pondered anew a question he had asked himself repeatedly over the past four years; a question which had no answer.

Scully remained silent. Her eyes said all that needed to be said. After the first exchange of glances, Mulder studiously avoided making eye contact. He knew he lied badly to her and he knew she knew it as well. 

"Sorry, Scully, my informant took forever to get to the point. You just can't get a good informant these days," Mulder quipped lightly as he maneuvered past her to the kitchen. Despite his efforts to avoid her eyes, he felt them sear into his back until he wondered why he wasn't igniting. "OK, so witty isn't the way to go," Mulder muttered to himself under the clatter of silverware.

He assembled dinner on the dining room table Scully had unearthed during her cleaning binge. He had more or less forgotten that it even existed except as a convenient dumping ground for bills, folders, notebooks and such.

With a small flourish, he brought out the casserole dish and let the fragrant odor of stroganoff fill the apartment. When the fresh salad and homemade dressing emerged from the refrigerator, Mulder thought he detected a slight softening of Scully's glare. 

"I threw myself on Stefan's mercy. I told him you were coming to dinner," Mulder confessed as he watched Scully struggle to maintain her veneer of irritation. He had taken her to the small Russian bistro a few times. Scully had made an impression on Stefan. He frequently asked about her. Mulder suspected that Stefan harbored latent matchmaker tendencies. Somehow, no matter how busy the bistro was, Stefan always managed to attend to them personally. Mulder began making a tradition out of taking Scully to the bistro for special occasions. Lately, before the assault, he had begun to find any number of occasions worthy of being called special.

"Let's eat. Stefan is going to ask me how you liked dinner and I'd rather not tell him that we were too busy arguing to eat it," Mulder said. Bracing himself, he managed to look Scully in the eye for almost a full five seconds before dropping his gaze. He knew he must look as guilty as sin. Scully couldn't miss the signs that he was keeping something from her.

"Mulder...." Scully began firmly then trailed off as Mulder offered her a chair. She wanted to clear the air between them, but she was hungry and Mulder was looking half sheepish, half hopeful. The dinner was a wonderful gesture. Maybe he was right. Maybe after they ate something and relaxed, they might be able to discuss her medical report and his blatant disregard for his own health as two calm rational adults.

"Later, Mulder," she warned him as she accepted the chair and began dishing out the salad. She had to smile as Mulder whipped out a pan of Stefan's special rolls. If they had food in heaven, Scully imagined that it would taste something like these rolls.

She gave Mulder a 'no fair cheating' look and was rewarded with a shrug and a sly smile. She might have been convinced that his disappearance was simply Mulder playing hooky except that the smile never touched his eyes, when she could see his eyes, that is. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong. Her eyes began boring holes in the top of Mulder's head.

"I promise - after dinner, tea and interrogation, for two," Mulder quipped as he looked up briefly with a resigned look on his face. He felt Scully scrutinizing him, trying to peel back his defenses and peek inside his mind. 

Not this time, Mulder vowed silently. He would tell her the whole truth only when it was too late for her to stop him from saving her life. Then he hoped he would be able, somehow, to find the strength to watch her walk out of his life in disgust.

They ate in silence, each locked away in their own minds, pondering how to tell the other what needed to be said without saying too much or revealing the pain they were intent on concealing from the other. Surreptitiously, Mulder watched Scully, trying to memorize her, to etch her as a tattoo in his memory - indelible, eternal. In a hundred quick glances, Scully observed Mulder, her eyes photographing images of him, carving them into her memory so that they would be the last thing her mind would see if the reborn cancer took everything else from her.

*********

"So, what did the doctor have to say?" Mulder asked as he handed her a steaming cup of strong black tea, lightly sugared. By the look on her face, he knew he had barely beat her to the punch. Delay could only work in his favor, he hoped.

"Not much," Scully answered, resorting to the literal truth. Dr. Morrison had been uncharacteristically reticent. After gruffly telling her that the latest X-rays showed a resurgence of the cancer, he shoved the report across his desk, almost into her lap and fled the office pleading an emergency. She had spent the next hour reading the report, trying to find a loophole in the inexorable conclusion that her brief remission was over.

Her curt response was met by silence. Mulder didn't say a word; he let his silence speak for him. Scully could deflect questions with a skill most criminals would envy, but she lied badly, at least about the important stuff. If he waited long enough, she would either have to answer the question or else try to change the subject, acknowledging that she had something to hide. He watched as her eyes changed color and narrowed as she realized she had been backed into a corner.

Those eyes also held a promise that he would pay for this momentary victory when his turn came. Right now he didn't care. He had to know the truth before he began to betray her trust - one last truth between them for old times sake.

"Dr. Morrison did not elaborate, but the reports seem to indicate that the mass was fractionally larger, indicating that the cancer was most likely active again," she recited evenly, fixing her attention on the wall just behind and to the right of Mulder's left ear. She waited for his protest, his invariable denial of medical fact. 

"What did he suggest?" Mulder asked slowly, choosing his words carefully, remembering that invisible ears were monitoring this conversation. 

Scully's eyes narrowed and she stared at Mulder, trying to decipher where his usual torrent of denial had gone. Mulder flatly refused to meet her eyes. She leaned over to touch his hand, to connect with him. Mulder surged up out of the chair and began pacing before her fingers had more than brushed against his skin. 

"We haven't discussed a course of treatment, yet. There are not a lot of options within traditional methods of treatment." Scully kept her voice calm, emotions shoved deep inside. Her voice was as remote as if she was discussing someone else's life-threatening disease, not her own. She wouldn't allow herself to break down in front of Mulder, to allow her fear to show. He must never feel she wasn't capable of handling this development; that she craved the feel of his arms around her as she dissolved into rage against this disease that was killing her.

Mulder tasted her fear like smoke in a tinder-dry forest. It fed his anger until he wondered why he didn't simply ignite in a firestorm of fury against the men who did this to her. He wanted to gather her into his arms and hold her tight against his chest, giving her the last ounce of his life if necessary to save her.

"There are other doctors, other treatments. If Morrison can't help you, then we'll find someone else," Mulder replied stubbornly. Of course it will be a doctor controlled by the Shadows, but if I'm a very good boy, he'll be a very good doctor, Mulder added silently. Suddenly the notion of trying to cheat Jason no longer looked quite so attractive. Face-to-face with Scully calmly reciting the details of the death sentence imposed on her by his enemies, his resolve faltered and his willingness to gamble with her life faded. The stakes were too high. 

"Dr. Morrison is the acknowledged expert in this type of cancer. I am not visiting a shaman or drinking some herbal remedy cooked up by a folk doctor," Scully added with a glimmer of a smile that was only a little forced. Look at me, Mulder. I'm still the same Scully I've always been. Don't turn away. I'm more than the cancer that's eating its way to my brain, her eyes pleaded with the back of his head. Anger at his refusal to look at her now blended with concern for him and the swift riptide of her own fear for the future. 

"I'm just saying that there may be other doctors better qualified to deal with a non-traditional course of action," Mulder snapped back a bit more sharply than he intended to. Without thinking, his eyes met hers in a instant of apology. He felt like a deer staring helplessly into the headlights of an oncoming truck. Panic gave him the willpower to pull his eyes away, but he knew that Scully's suspicions were aroused. In her stubborn concern for his worthless soul, she would hound him for the truth until she dragged herself into the swamp with him. 

Scully got up and walked over to where Mulder stood staring at the floor. Tenderly she reached out to him, but stepped back when he flinched away from her touch.

Mulder simply shook his head and pushed past Scully to sit down on the couch, cradling his head in his hands. Why couldn't she simply leave well enough alone? Why did she have to be so fucking persistent about prying into his affairs when any sane person run as far away as possible?

"You believe this is about you, don't you?" Scully asked incredulously. Memories of an argument about a desk and a life of her own surfaced. Her stumbling attempt to explain her angry rebellion echoed back to her. 'Not everything is about you.' The issues at the heart of her anger still festered below the scab they had pasted over the breach. 

"Everything is always about you, isn't it. You think that somehow you're responsible for what's happening, don't you?" Irritation began replacing the concern of a moment ago. Why did Mulder have to make this so difficult? For the first time since staring at the X-rays, the anger boiling deep inside her surged upwards. His rebuff of her concern threatened to undermine the cool, detached manner she chose to deal with the resurgence of her cancer.

Mulder tried to speak, but realized he had nothing to say, but the truth which was not what Scully needed or wanted to hear.

Angry at being shut out, Scully's temper snapped as the strain of the past few weeks broke her self-imposed controls. Anger gave her the insight to know what words would hurt the most. Fear spat them out at the man who lay at the core of all her hopes and fears.

"I can't even die without it being about you," Scully snapped. In the twinkling of an eye, her cool exterior melted in a blazing catharsis of anger. 

She knew that Mulder was not to blame, but he was part of the crushing load of fear and anger she had been carrying around for weeks. Barely learning to deal with her own impending death, she had been hurled into the maelstrom of fear that instead of preparing him for her death, she would have to adjust to his loss. Because of him, she had to accept that she was not whole without him. Because of him, she needed another person as much as she needed air to breathe. Fear became anger and the anger became too much to bear in silence. As unreasonable as it was, she damned him for making her need him.

Mulder stared at her, her words slashing like daggers across his guilty soul. She was wrong. It was about him. His enemies were using her, making her suffer because of who or what he was. He realized that she saw his answer as further evidence of his self-centered preoccupation with his obsession, but she was suffering because she got mixed up with a loser who was too dependent on her to send her away before she got hurt.

It was now painfully clear that she did not know how important she had become to him. The man who bought his soul knew her value. Scully was no pawn, a casual sacrifice to gain a momentary advantage in a game. She was the queen - the most versatile, dangerous piece on the entire board. Without her, his quest would be a pointless series of maneuvers with little hope of ultimate victory.

Now he had it in his power to send her away, to set her free. With a single word he could surrender to the darkness and free her to walk in the light. The seduction of surrender felt like a lover's embrace. He was tired of fighting against his darker nature. 

Letting go, he unleashed his anger, reveling in the hot taste of fury and despair. His eyes closed off the windows to his soul, cast her out of the intimacy they shared. He saw her anger collapse in on itself as he gouged a chasm between them. Shaking with the effort to control his despair and grief, he poured all of his fury into the single word of truth that would damn him in her sight.

"Yes." 

Yes, Scully is it all about me, Mulder thought sadly. You were destined to fly high until you collided with the Mulder disaster field.

Mulder watched as Scully's expression turned from anger into stunned disbelief then back to anger again. It was done. Not as he wanted it done, but it was better this way. A quick, clean surgical strike with Scully's anger to cauterize the gaping wound where his heart and his honor used to be. He drowned his pain in anger and with ice-cold eyes, shut her out.

"Is that all I am to you? Just a pawn in your megalomaniacal universe?" Scully's voice was rigid with anger hovering on the brink of detonation.

Mulder detected the hurt seething below her rising anger. He felt it like shards of glass in his heart, but could not relent. He drew on his own reservoir of anger to dull the pain.

Was she blind to her true value? What was so fucking important about being his equal in the sight of their enemies? It only brought him anguish as he watched his family disintegrate around him - his father dead, his sister taken and his mother a stranger protecting the lies more precious than himself. Was she really so fucked-up that she wanted to be seen as his equal in this insane game by men who dined on the souls of any who opposed them?

It occurred to him that this sudden eruption from a quiet, intimate dinner into furious recriminations was typical of their relationship. They constantly walked the razor's edge between intimacy and estrangement. The very things that made them so strong together, also worked against them whenever they tried to delve into emotional issues.

For a moment he considered ignoring the listeners and taking her into his arms and confessing everything - from how much she meant to him to the barter he made for her life. Just once, he wanted to bare his soul to her, to cut past the evasions, the innuendoes, the camouflage of humor he used to hide himself from her. 

Then he remembered - it wasn't his soul anymore. Chastened by the grim realization that once again he was too little, too late, he sat in silence as she turned her back on him and walked away.

Fighting to control her anger, Scully now took up position by the window, staring blindly out into the night. The tattoo on her back burned. This was not happening her soul whispered to her angry heart. Something had gone terribly awry with the discussion. Even in the midst of her fury at Mulder's egotistical guilt trip, she sensed that the normal rhythms of their arguments were all wrong. The feel of this argument was different from all the others they had had in the past. 

The silence hung painfully between them. Mulder's temper began to fray as he tried to brace himself for Scully's inevitable departure. It was killing him to watch her fighting to regain her composure, her balance against the harshness of his words. He had shut her out for her own good, but what if in doing so, he also destroyed part of who she was?

Enlightenment. Revelation. Everything but the fucking Mormon Tabernacle Choir went off in his head. 

He was a fool.

OK, perhaps not an entirely new thought, but the current implications of this insight were staggering. Scully was right - he was assuming that this entire scenario was solely about him. He prattled to himself about how important Scully was to him, yet cast her out of the equation when it came down to her own future.

"Shit," he growled hoarsely. When he invited chaos into the game, he had in mind some personal grandstanding, a bit of dramatic one-upmanship, not challenging his own nature and moving contrary to every instinct he had where Scully was concerned.

It had been so easy to play the martyr. Now he had the uncomfortable feeling that playing that card was taking the easy way out. His enemies must have realized how close to emotional exhaustion he was and offered him a chance to give up and still feel as if he had won something. He felt a certain respect for the man who profiled him so well. He suspected it was the man he had talked to on the park bench. There was a bond between them that went deeper than the bond between a killer and his victim. The man knew him, knew which way he would jump, knew the trap to lay and the choice he would make.

Two futures lay open before him. In neither one did he see any potential for personal happiness, but in one he could show Scully just how much she did mean to him and give her the two most precious gifts he had to offer - his honesty and his complete trust. In the other, he could allow the darkness to swallow him and leave Scully behind to fight her own darkness alone.

However, resolving to buck the odds and actually getting his mouth around the words were two different things. His mind and heart were willing, but his voice simply couldn't say the words.

"Fuck this," Mulder said loud enough for Scully to hear. Other than a slight twitch of her shoulders, however, she gave no indication she heard him. Every inch of her rigid back and clenched hands screamed out her anger, her fury at the insult he had allowed her to believe.

Grabbing his cell-phone, he punched in Skinner's pager number. As long as he was throwing himself into the arms of chaos, he might as well go all the way.

At least the savage sound of him abusing innocent cell-phone buttons got Scully's attention. Her face was flushed and her eyes were icy with anger, but she was looking at him. 

Times like this he really missed a cigarette. If nothing else, it would give him something to do with his hands. He clutched the cell-phone like a drowning man clinging to a life preserver. 

Taking a deep breath, he embraced chaos and looked her square in the eyes. The part of him that wasn't shaking like a leaf, smiled as confusion challenged anger for dominance in her expression. We've thrown away the script, partner; ad lib time, he whispered to himself.

"You really want to hear the truth?" he asked softly. Part of him prayed that she didn't, but he knew she could not resist knowing even if the truth only brought her more pain.

"Your truth or the truth, Mulder?" Scully asked warily.

"Simply a truth, as far as I know it. It's dangerous, it's dirty, but it's all I have left to give you," Mulder replied quietly as he stood up to face his partner and his judge.

************

"What the hell is he doing?" Jason muttered as he listened to Mulder preparing to bare his soul, the soul *he* owned, damn it, to his partner. Damn the man. Did he think this little confession scene would alter the deal one iota?

"Scully, I went out this afternoon to meet someone, someone who sent me a warning that you were in danger." 

Mulder held up his hand to silence Scully before she could speak. Giving her a sad smile he walked over to the pouch sitting by his computer and handed it to her. He watched as her fingers felt the unfamiliar shape of the chess pieces inside. In response to her quizzical look, he nodded his intention for her to open the pouch.

Scully looked even more perplexed as she looked at a white queen and a white bishop lying in her hand. The heavy parchment note sailed to the floor like the last stubborn leaf of fall. 

"I was offered a deal, by the devil himself if I'm any judge." Mulder paused, unable to bear looking into Scully's worried eyes. "Not a very original deal. I gave up, Scully. Your life, Skinner's life - the price of not giving up was too high."

Mulder forced himself to look down into Scully's eyes - to read his fate in those clear blue eyes that had never been tarnished by dishonor.

Jason swore bitterly at the offending receiver as he listened to Mulder's confession. This ill-timed burst of honesty served no purpose except to complicate the deal. In a very dim way, he supposed he did understand Mulder's need to lay bare his treason. He never had anyone who would have cared enough to mourn his lost soul, but he did understand the forlorn wish to be mourned.

"Don't mess this deal up, Mulder or you'll be on a morgue slab and I'll be a cloud of ash drifting over New Jersey." Jason tried not to contemplate the consequences of failure. He had notified his friend that the deal was done - Mulder was theirs. Failure now would leave his friend no choice and him no future.

"Mulder, you can't let them win. You've lost too much. I've lost too much. Fight them," Scully pleaded with steel in her voice. She couldn't believe what she was hearing. Either Mulder had gone completely insane or else the shadows she had stubbornly refused to acknowledge really were using her as a pawn.

"Is this what you meant when you said this was about you?" she asked uncertainly. She would be more than happy to erase the memory of Mulder dismissing her importance even if it meant accepting that the conspiracy they fought had reached into her life to manipulate her cancer.

Mulder nodded. He didn't trust his voice. All his flagging energy had been poured into getting this confession out. His throat burned and ached - a living reminder of his opponent's intrusion into his life.

Clutching the chess pieces in a closed fist, Scully stooped down and picked up the note and read it. She puzzled over the contents, forgetting Mulder who was standing quietly in the shadow just outside the glare of the lamp. Without really thinking about it, Mulder was already retreating into the darkness he believed he had given himself to.

"Who....?"

Mulder smiled, transforming his sad eyes into burning reflections of his heart.

"Well, unless I've taken leave of my senses, I think our enemies recognize that you are the most important piece in this game of theirs. Can't think of anyone else I'd trust with the job," Mulder ended on an embarrassed note. He wasn't used to this much honesty. It provoked a strong desire to cut and run and hide somewhere until the urge to bare his soul had passed.

As he listened, Jason was torn between respect for Mulder's ability to maneuver some breathing room and irritation that his carefully prepared plans had not been sufficient to demoralize him. Jason realized that he had no one to blame but himself if he had underestimated Mulder. Jonathan had certainly given him plenty of advice about Mulder's genius for skating on thin ice and surviving. 

Jason did not waste time in useless recriminations. The simple fact of the matter was that he had failed to recognize and take into account the intensity of the bond between Mulder and his very dangerous partner. The one thing he had not foreseen was that Mulder would go against his nature and bring Scully into the equation. In fact, if the phone message he overheard was correct, Mulder was acting completely against every profile the Elders had on him and was bringing his boss into the now chaotic mess that was Jason's crisp neat plan to subvert Mulder. Jason briefly wondered if he could make a deal with all three of them, to bring all three under the overt umbrella of the Consortium while making sure their first obligation was to him and his friend. 

"Mulder, you can't make deals with these people," Scully protested. Her eyes were angry, but they softened when Mulder flinched. She was furious, but only a small portion of that anger was for Mulder's obstinate streak of self-sacrifice.

Mulder shrugged. "It's done." He was trembling as he tried not to take his eyes from Scully's. He wished she would just damn him and get it over with. She wasn't following the script, damn it.

A loud authoritative knock on his front door saved Mulder from drowning in the ice-blue ocean of Scully's eyes. She persisted in caring for him, fearing for him, even, to his complete astonishment, loving him. Mulder didn't know whether to bolt or fall down on his knees before her and cling to her for salvation. 

Mulder was becoming convinced that God was using him for divine comic relief. Of all the times to realize that Scully loved him. Fresh from signing his soul away, he should not be standing here burning in the heat of her love.

Startled by the interruption, Scully stepped back. Trying to gather her scattered wits, she walked over to the window. She suspected their untimely interruption was Skinner responding to Mulder's call. She did not intend to greet Skinner with a flushed face and unshuttered eyes.

Listening in on the rustle of movement in Mulder's apartment, Jason hoped that Skinner would be a sensible man and suggest that everyone get some rest and meet to talk about this situation in the morning. "Give me four hours with Mulder and I'll make him forget this awkward lapse into moral honesty," Jason muttered.

Jason heard Mulder step to the door as the listening device picked up a cacophony of confusion. Glass shattered, hitting the wooden floor with an icy patter A soft thud was mixed in with the sound of a door opening. Heavy feet moved quickly. Mulder's bellow ended in a rasping crack as his voice splintered. 

Swearing, Jason pulled the ear piece out and hoped he had not gone deaf in that ear. Mulder must have been standing right under the mike. 

Odd, he thought, even without the ear-piece he could still hear the sounds of bodies thrashing about.

"Damn," he yelled as the soft pops of a silenced pistol sounded from just outside his office. His gun was up and aimed at the doorway even as he ducked for cover.

A roar of gunfire, quickly followed by another loud shot temporarily deafened him. He held his ground, determined to make the assassins pay very dearly for his life. Stupid, he muttered to himself. He measured the distance to his bolt hole and calculated the odds of making his escape before his assassins burst in. Something had gone wrong with their plan. Obviously their plan had been to disable his alarm system then burst in and execute him before he had a chance to react. Now he could only wait to see whether his unknown helper or the assassins would walk through the door. 

"Sir?" Hamilton's voice sounded breathless, as close to ruffled as he ever expected to hear from his dapper assistant. Jason remained silent. He wished he had had the foresight to put a remote switch on the light. Darkness would be really helpful right now. If he lived through this night, he would make installing remote switches a priority.

"Sir, I am coming in. I'll slide my gun on the floor and keep my hands in plain sight. The assassins are quite dead and making a terrible mess of the carpet."

Jason said nothing, but watched cautiously as a Browning 9mm was pushed through the small crack in the door, butt first. From the soft hissing noises Hamilton was making, the barrel was still very hot. Slowly the gun was lowered to the floor and was sent gliding across the polished oak floor with a tap of a foot. 

After a moment, the door opened the rest of the way and a bleeding, swaying Hamilton appeared. His teeth were bared in a grimace as he held his arms up and out. Blood dripped rapidly from his left shoulder and forearm. 

It was possible this was a set up, but Jason's instincts were telling him that whatever else Hamilton was, he was not a traitor.

"Put your arms down before you bleed to death," Jason ordered curtly, waving his assistant over to the chair beside his desk. Hamilton lowered his arm and stumbled forward. Still holding his pistol, Jason leaned over and examined the wounds. 

"You'll live. The bullets passed straight through. You are a lucky man or should I say that I am?" Jason glared at Hamilton. "What brought you back here so late?"

"I was told by a reliable source that the Elders were cleaning house. I thought that it was possible that you were one of the people on their list. Being right hurts," Hamilton grunted as Jason shoved a handkerchief into his right hand and pressed the hand against the hole in his shoulder.

Damn them, Jason thought with cold fury. The mysterious sounds in Mulder's apartment suddenly made sense. Apparently Mulder was another one of those loose ends being tidied up tonight. Damn those old men to hell.

"Your friend, the smoker?" At Jason's nod, Hamilton continued, "He's been shot. His assassin was a bit divided in his loyalties so he gave your friend a chance to bleed to death rather than taking a clean kill."

"How do you know this," Jason asked suspiciously.

"Because my reliable informant is at the moment lying in my bed with my best pillowcase plugging the hole in his chest," Hamilton said with a sly smile for Jason's astonishment.

"Thank you," Jason said quietly, gently resting a hand on Hamilton's good shoulder. "The Elders won't be very happy with you for this night's work."

"I don't work for the Elders. I work for you, sir," Hamilton replied wearily, the adrenaline seeping out of him.

"I'll take you back to your place. Lock the doors. I'll send Webster over to stitch you both up and get my friend to a safe house. Lie low until you hear from me personally. If you don't hear from me by noon tomorrow, I'll most likely be dead. Take the best offer you can and play their game until you're strong enough to play your own." Jason instructed brusquely.

Loyalty like this was something he had never considered or counted on and he was at a loss to know how to acknowledge it. Thankfully, Hamilton seemed too out of it to realize how taken-aback his boss was by his words.

Hamilton nodded as Jason helped him up and leaned him against the wall. It was going to be a busy night. Jason locked his office door behind them as he shifted through people he trusted enough to clean up the mess in his outer office. Hamilton had shot one of the men through the head. Blood and brains were splattered all over the leather upholstery and the walls.

Using a very circuitous route, Jason got Hamilton home. He took the luxury of checking on his friend while he was there. The wound was bad, but his friend was tenacious and, even unconscious, appeared as tough as nails.

"They'll pay for this night, my old friend. They will pay until their souls bleed." 

*********

Mulder opened the door to see something he rarely saw - a puzzled Skinner. His perverse sense of humor goaded him into smiling at his confused boss. Skinner gave him a stern look. Situation normal, Mulder thought with an odd feeling of comfort. Skinner looked positively menacing in a black fisherman's sweater, leather gloves and a dark leather jacket. Where the jacket hung open, Mulder could see Skinner's pistol. Apparently he had taken Mulder's warning that serious shit was flying. 

As quickly as Mulder's smile appeared, it vanished into a somber, almost grim expression. It seemed appropriate that he and Skinner were dressed alike in black; twin shadows who had mortgaged their souls for the woman standing behind him.

He nodded a greeting and stepped aside to allow Skinner to enter. The silence between the men was broken by the sound of breaking glass. Skinner's eyes went wide. With three long strides he moved into the room, pulling his gun and dropping into a near crouch. Mulder spun around in time to see Scully crumple into the floor.

"SCULLY!" he yelled, his voice breaking and crackling as his throat was scoured raw. He felt as if he had swallowed the shards of glass scattered around Scully's body. 

Skinner moved to the wall and sidled over to the window, trying to peer out without offering a target. Heedless of anything but Scully lying on the floor amid blood and glass, Mulder charged to her side, dropping to his knees and skidding the last foot or so. Glass impaled his knees, but he didn't feel a thing.

Another bullet passed through the air where Mulder's head had been a second before.

"Damn it, Mulder, be careful," Skinner hissed. He spared a glance down at Scully and realized that being careful was probably the last thing on Mulder's mind.

He didn't want to leave Mulder alone, but he was useless up here with no target to shoot at and no cover. Clawing his cell-phone out of his coat pocket, he called in the shooting. 

"Officer down." He hated those two words, too often they preceded the grim fact that the downed officer was lost, but they would bring down the might of the law enforcement world in swift response. One of their own was in peril.

Skinner made it to the street by the time he heard the first faint wails of the sirens converging on this place. Gauging the trajectory of the bullet, Skinner slipped through the shadows until he was in position to watch the rear entrance of the building across from Mulder's. As the street outside the main entrance filled with police cars, Skinner waited patiently for the rat to run for cover.

A shadow slipped into a darker shadow. The assassin never broke from cover, but moved relentlessly towards escape.

"Freeze! FBI. Put your weapon down, NOW!" Skinner shouted as he brought the fleeing gunman into his sights.

The man suddenly dropped and turned and Skinner felt the hot buzz of a bullet carve a grove across his check.

Returning fire was an automatic response and a deadly one. Skinner knew what he would find even as he walked slowly over to the heap of bloody clothing lying in the alley. He felt no pity, just anger at men who killed from ambush. There would be no answers; this man would have no identity. He sympathized with Mulder. On more than one occasion, desperately sought and paid for evidence vanished without a trace, leaving behind only more questions. It never ended.

Skinner waited for the arrival of the police. The gunman's rifle was silenced, but the roar of his own gun must have alerted the police who would be approaching with caution and suspicion. Skinner put up his gun and had his FBI identification ready by the time the beams of the officers' flashlights lit up the alley.

*********

Mulder tried to call to Scully, to tell her not to leave him, to plead with her, but his raw throat refused to utter a sound. He fought the urge to cough. There was enough blood here, he didn't need to add to it.

Scully lay in a heap. Blood was spreading out around her, soaking her hair, dying her white sweater. Mulder scooped her up until he could cradle her head against his chest and lay her body in his lap. He felt the beat of her heart as it labored under the strain of pumping a diminishing supply of blood.

The bullet had gone in high on her left shoulder; a small rather neat hole that belied the gaping wound in her back busily pouring her life out all over his lap. Mulder crammed a discarded napkin into the wound and pressed her tightly against his chest to hold it in place. His hands were slick with blood and fear. 

As he held her, he felt her life soak into him and he wondered that it did not burn him with scalding accusations. He had brought her to this. He should have sent her away. Then it would be him lying here, in the place he was meant to be. 

Damn it, Scully. You can't die. My life for hers. That was the deal. Mulder's thoughts were a jumble of fear, anger and confusion. He had paid the price. His soul was sealed and delivered. Why her? Why now? Because he told her the truth? Mulder pleaded with a God he had avoided for over twenty years for a miracle. Not her. Not Scully, please.

"Don't leave me," he whispered, his throat aching as he fought to say the words. His voice was a husky rasp, but he hoped Scully understood all the things he couldn't say.

His entire being was focused on Scully, but he sensed a presence. If he looked away from her face he knew he would see the dark angel who had stood over him on a cold, icy street waiting to take him into death. Mulder stubbornly refused to acknowledge the intrusion of death. Scully hadn't let him die and he wasn't about to let her go either. He would fight Death himself if he had to.

Rocking slowly back and forth, cradling her as he breathed soundless words into her face, Mulder didn't hear the medics until one of them reached out to take her from him. Mulder fought to keep hold of her, clutching her so tight he felt her ribs bend. "No, I won't let you have her," he rasped painfully. He tasted blood. Fear suffocated sense and reason.

"Mister, let go," a medic barked, impatient to begin to try to save this woman's life. 

"Mulder."

A whisper. A sound as soft as snow and as loud as a trumpet call woke Mulder from his panicked resistance. 

Swallowing painfully, Mulder forced her name out of his torn throat and tried to smile at her. It was a weak effort, but he was rewarded by a return smile that didn't break into an anguished groan for nearly three seconds, an eternity of hope for him.

Reluctantly, Mulder released her into the care of the medics, but held onto her hand until the medics lifted her onto the gurney, forcibly separating them. He struggled briefly to stand, unaware that his untamed eyes reflected only horror and death and unending fear. He felt strong arms engulf him and hold him as he vainly attempted to struggle to her side. The darkness roared and swept over him as he collapsed in the arms that would not let him fall.

Disjointed words. The sounds of plastic tearing. Medical sounds. Familiar sounds. Skinner's voice.

"Mulder."

With a start, Mulder came back to full consciousness, aware of the cold air freezing his bloody sweater to his body. Scully was gone. He could feel the cold of her absence freezing his soul. He was afraid. If she was really gone, if death had taken her, he would freeze to death from the inside out until nothing was left but a frozen husk that walked and talked but felt nothing.

Unable to speak, Mulder looked into Skinner's eyes for hope. Skinner nodded though his eyes reflected his own worry.

Alive, then, but still in danger.

**************

Jason walked slowly down the corridor of the hospital. Four weeks ago, he had walked this same corridor to observe the man he had tried to kill struggle back from the brink of death. Up ahead, standing like a tall pillar of black ice, that man now stood outside a room watching his partner fight to live as she had watched him fight. 

Keeping an eye out for stray Assistant Directors, Jason slipped into an alcove where he could observe Mulder for awhile. He was flying by the seat of his pants now, improvising on the run. For the first time in years, he felt free. He was in an impossible situation with a death sentence waiting to be executed, yet there was an invigorating intoxication in skating along the thin edge of extinction with only his wits and his cunning keeping him alive.

Once again, Mulder was the key to the situation. Jason wondered if there actually was a minor god called Murphy and whether Mulder was his acolyte. Mulder seemed to move unscathed through disasters and cataclysms, wrecking the finely tuned plans of men who were themselves little less than gods in terms of the power they wielded. Well, if Mulder was Murphy's Law in action, then it behooved Jason to use his talents to the utmost. The only question was how?

Mulder stood vigil outside Scully's room. She looked so small and fragile lying there amid a maze of wires and tubes. Unconscious, her face devoid of the lively intelligence that transformed her, she looked like a child sleeping in blissful ignorance of the war being waged for her life. 

The bandages on his knees stretched as he moved. He had protested taking the time to have the glass shards removed, but Skinner had been adamant. In fact, Skinner had taken over, getting him out of his blood-soaked clothes, propelling him into the emergency room for treatment and forcing a gallon of coffee into him until he threw the final cup against the wall along with a string of obscene curses. In Mulder's fragmented memory, he remembered Skinner smiling as he left to find some towels to clean up the mess. If he lived to be a hundred, Mulder doubted if he would ever completely understand Skinner.

Vaguely he recalled Skinner telling him that the man who had done this to her was dead. Mulder couldn't remember if he even acknowledged the information. It didn't matter. The assassin was merely the tool, not the heart and mind behind the killing. Inside his frozen soul, Mulder plotted the death of the men who stood in the shadows behind the assassin. If Scully died... Mulder's heart shuddered at even contemplating such a disaster, but his angry soul repeated the words, driving home the despair, to kill the last vestige of mercy. If Scully died, he would hunt down the men responsible before he joined her.

Mulder was struck by the hellish symmetry of his life. She had stood here, just four weeks earlier, as he lay amid a tangle of wires and tubes fighting for his life. He would gladly trade places with her; he wanted to trade places with her. Anything to silence the ache that was squeezing his heart into bitter wormwood. Anything to silence the guilt that charged him with her death and demanded expiation in blood.

No, that was taking the easy way out, he thought with the last remnant of his dalliance with emotional honesty. Scully didn't deserve the pain of watching him die. He deserved every second of pain knowing she was dying because of him. He embraced the pain, made it part of him, used it to encase his heart in bands of unrelenting steel. Vengeance would be his. Mercy would be buried with her, along with his heart, his honor and his soul. Mulder felt the bloodlust rise and recoiled from the soulless executioner he saw himself becoming.

He didn't want to exist in a living hell. The ice that was freezing his soul frightened him. Madness had always lurked deep within his soul. Fury had unlocked the chains more than once and murder danced in the fires of his temper. Always before he had had a reason to not take the final step over the line. Now, his reason lay dying and the fires beckoned. He was so cold.

"Scully," he whispered in desperation. "Please, don't go. Don't leave me to face my demons alone." 

Tears boiled up, but he refused to cry until he knew whether he was crying for his death or hers. Taking a deep breath he fought the urge to cough as the air rasped over his raw throat. 

"I wish I could make outlandish promises that I'll change, that I will be the man you think you see beneath the mask. I can't. I am who I am, Scully. Not much to offer, I guess. There'll always be some quest, some monster that calls me out for one more fight. It's what I do. You deserve so much more than I can give you, but I give you all of what I have."

Mulder leaned against the glass, etching his plea into the glass barrier between them.

"You can't die now. Not until we at least try to see if it can work between us. If you die now, I don't think I can find my way home in the dark." Mulder closed his eyes, his body folded in prayer even while his soul cried out that no one other than Scully cared enough to listen to his plea. If she could not hear him, who would?

"Agent Mulder," Skinner interrupted his agent's dour thoughts with a softening of his usual resonant bass tones. He waited patiently as Mulder gathered himself together. His own mood was bleak as he fought the urge to revert back to the simple Marine code that blood called for blood.

"Yes sir," Mulder replied wearily. He raised his hand against the window in a silent, final supplication. With a ragged sigh he straightened up and turned to face the inevitable concern he knew would be in Skinner's eyes.

"Get some rest. You've been standing here for nearly eight hours. I'll watch over her," Skinner glared briefly to forestall the protest he saw building in Mulder's stormy eyes. "The moment anything changes, I'll call you. I promise."

Mulder shook his head, denying his body's need for rest. He was afraid that if he left her, she might forget his overwhelming need and drift into the peace offered by death. He remembered how alluring death could seem, offering peace and solace for all the pain and hurt acquired over the years. 

"She will need to see you when she wakes up." Skinner tried to put as much confidence in those words as he could. Scully had to survive. If she died, no man on earth would be able to control Mulder's rage and he wasn't even sure he would try. 

"Besides, if you go find a quiet place to rest, Agent Smithers won't have a chance to track you down and get a statement from you. He is taking this investigation very seriously. I think you would prefer to have all your wits about you before tackling his questions," Skinner advised with a note of wary resignation in his voice.

Mulder raised his eyebrow at the change in tone. Skinner's expression remained bland, but a slight shrug of one shoulder and a soft sigh told him that Skinner had already endured Smithers's bulldog persistence and had had an interesting time tap-dancing around the truth.

"You know, I am really tempted to tell Smithers the absolute truth, but I don’t think he's ready for it," Mulder replied wearily, rubbing his forehead with the heels of his hands.

"I'd like to think that most of the agents under my command aren't ready to accept the truth we both know exists." Skinner paused, considering whether to pursue his own curiosity.

"I gave up, sir. I sold my soul to the devil and it couldn't even buy Scully her life." Mulder sagged against the wall, his tone defeated, his body collapsing in on itself as his rage turned inward.

Skinner guided Mulder over to some very uncomfortable-looking vinyl chairs. He said nothing. If Mulder wanted to talk, he would. The tale sounded terribly familiar. His own soul had been bartered for little or no results that he could see. It was a humbling experience to find that your most precious possession was worthless tender to your enemies.

"You are being set up, sir. There's a tape in my collection which has damning evidence against you. It's hidden, but if Smithers does a thorough search, he might stumble on it."

Skinner swallowed hard and his fingers stiffened around Mulder's shoulders, but he gave no other sign that he felt the noose tightening around his neck. He saw a spark of humor in Mulder's eyes.

"What..."

"The Gladiator and the Slave Girls of Atlantis is very high on my recommended viewing list, sir," Mulder said with a wry twist to his tone that broadened into a grim chuckle as Skinner's look of bewilderment turned into acknowledgement. 

"Agent Mulder, remind me to have a long talk with you, off the record of course, about your video habits," Skinner said with mock sternness. Smithers was a puritan; groping through Mulder's extensive porn video collection would not be a task he would relish. 

"Yes sir," Mulder said as he sagged back against the wall, suddenly too weary to continue talking in circles.

"If you won't rest, at least go take a walk and get some fresh air. I'll stay here. I have an agent posted on the door to the ICU and another one by the stairs. No one will get to her," Skinner vowed. He felt a slight surge of pride that Mulder gave a nod in response to his assurance. Mulder did not extend trust lightly, especially where Scully's welfare was concerned. Now for the hard part.

"I have also assigned Agent Cawlder to guard you," Skinner made his voice a battering ram that ran over and through Mulder's abortive attempt at protest. "You were the main target, Mulder. That bullet would have taken you in the gut. Somebody out there doesn't like you very much. I am not going to watch Scully pull through only to have to tell her that I was careless enough to allow you to be killed." Skinner was firm on this point. By this time, whoever had ordered Mulder's death, must know that their assassin had failed. It was only logical to assume they would try again.

Mulder looked rebellious, hunching his body against the necessity to walk among armed guards. 

"I don't want..." Mulder started to protest then saw the implacable resolve in Skinner's eyes and recognized that on this issue he wasn't going to be moved. It must be the lingering influence of brutal emotional honesty, he decided as he realized that he had lost his usual urge to fight the intrusion of authority into his private life.

"Yes sir," he conceded. At least his abrupt surrender was rewarded by a look of astonishment before Skinner recovered his composure. Mulder gave him a resigned shrug as he shoved upwards to a standing position. It took a minute to regain his equilibrium and stop the hallway from spinning, but he waved off Skinner's assist and turned to leave.

"I'm going to the garden. It's private enough there that I should be safe. Tell Cawlder not to hover," Mulder snapped as he walked down the hallway. In the darkness of the hospital garden, maybe the man who bought his soul would emerge and tell him why it had not been enough.

In the shadows, Jason smiled. He was growing to like Mulder. The lad had a flair for improvisation and a genius for taking chances no sane man would consider. Bill Mulder never fathered this wolfling, if he was any judge of men. Neither had his smoking friend, who made caution and circumspection his gods. A glimmer of an idea began to rise like the dawning sun. Jason actually smiled. Where better to hide the truth than in a nest of lies? 

Still smiling, Jason slipped into one of the side rooms and through an easily unlocked connecting door into an examining room that opened out onto the main ER corridor. From there he moved quickly towards the small enclosed garden. The ubiquitous Agent Cawlder paced restlessly by the entrance to the garden, obviously uneasy at his orders not to hover. Through the heavy glass sliding doors, Jason could see Mulder standing in the courtyard, staring at the winter-dead garden, waiting for some sign, some indication that his bargain had meant something.

Thankful that he had memorized the plans to the hospital four weeks ago, Jason followed a series of winding hallways until he reached a door that opened into the rear of the garden. He stepped into a small area hidden from the main entrance by large coniferous bushes enclosing a long semi-circular bench facing the statue of some unknown saint softly lit by recessed lights. A peaceful spot where he and Mulder could have a private discussion without distressing the earnest Agent Cawlder.

Jason sat quietly, listening to Mulder's restless footsteps grow closer. When he could hear the rasp of his breathing, he spoke up.

"Fox."

Mulder froze in mid-step. He had hoped for this meeting, but now faced it with an equal measure of fear and righteous anger. He didn't want to die with so many things left unsaid between him and Scully. He wanted to hate this man who had disdained his soul while at the same time he wanted to go to his knees and beg for some miracle to save Scully.

Gathering his anger around him like a shield, Mulder walked towards the soft circle of light. Jason stood up as he entered the small plaza. 

"You are not surprised to see me here. Good. I like a man who anticipates events," Jason said calmly. It was time Mulder learned the price of playing this game. Their lives hung upon what passed between them in the next few minutes. Their lives and the lives of his friend, of Scully, even the life of A. D. Skinner all depended on whether Mulder would listen or act on the rage that was consuming him.

"Why," Mulder poured all of his rage into a single hoarse word. Mulder faced his tormenter, his eyes a dark hurricane green.

"Complacent men, afraid of what they cannot control, acted impulsively," Jason replied cryptically. "You should understand that much, at least."

Mulder scowled but said nothing. His fists clenched at his sides, he stood silent, a forbidding dark shadow standing in the light, trembling with an effort to contain the rage that demanded vengeance.

Jason sighed. So much anger, yet with enough wisdom or caution to wait and hear what he had to say. He might own this man's soul, but he wondered if anyone had the power to control him. Perhaps it was best not to try. The hawk served best slipped from its leash and allowed to hunt on its own. He would have to trust that, in the end, this hawk would return to his fist.

"You are not the only one who wonders if they will lose a friend, someone closer than a friend, this night. I learned too late what was planned to warn you. A friend lies where your partner lies as a result of their orders. The Elders will pay. I offer you a chance to help make them pay for this night's pain." Jason watched Mulder carefully as he recited the litany of the Elders' crimes against both of them. 

"You said Scully would not be harmed if I accepted your deal," Mulder retorted in a husky, angry voice. His hands flexed as he fought the urge to throttle the truth out of the man who betrayed him.

"Yet you took it upon yourself to tell her about your deal. That was not in the bargain, as I recall," Jason responded calmly, feeling his way back onto familiar ground.

"You didn't say I couldn't," Mulder threw back defiantly, aware that he sounded like a small boy arguing with his elders.

"Very good, Fox," Jason smiled. "An old friend said you have a genius for discovering even the tiniest loophole. No, I never said you couldn't tell your partner or Skinner about our little deal. That wasn't why she was shot."

Mulder gave up trying to appear calm and began pacing in fits and starts around the plaza. If he put a little distance between him and Jason, he might be able to resist killing him with his bare hands on the spot.

"You were the target. Agent Scully was a miscalculation. I suspect that the shooter would have paid dearly for that mistake even if he had been successful in bringing you down. The Elders do not tolerate mistakes or individual initiative," Jason said with a grim humorless smile. "I on the other hand, encourage initiative and reward it."

Jason walked over to the bench and sat down, drawing Mulder's attention to him by the force of his words and his will. Death still hung in the air, but Jason sensed that Mulder was beginning to listen.

"You were just one of several men slated for termination tonight. The Elders are now short several assassins and none of their targets are dead. No doubt there are some serious recriminations occurring right now among the Council."

"They will try again?" Mulder asked with a sudden return of fear for Scully's safety. He half turned to go when Jason reached out and held him still with one hand. Mulder froze at the touch, stiff with anger, but also curious.

"As I said, I intend to make the Elders pay. You and Skinner are my hawks. I can give you much information that will make the Elders extremely uncomfortable. You will act on that information. Between us we will shake the complacency of the Project's overlords. With my knowledge you have a chance to learn the truth hidden behind the lies you've been fed all these years."

Jason watched Mulder struggle with the concept that his bargain was not complete surrender, but simply a new way to fight the lies. He did not look totally convinced, but Jason sensed that the desire to fight back and inflict real damage was draining away his urge to refuse.

"Fox, the conspiracy you fight has more than one face, more than one purpose. If tonight's events had gone as I had planned, I would have brought you into the Project as their tool, to serve as your father always intended. Now I bring you and Skinner in as my tools. We will show them that we are not to be taken lightly," Jason urged, letting the long-banked fire of his ambition flare up and out to touch Mulder with its heat.

Mulder threw back his head and stared at the moonless sky above. His world had shifted on its axis one too many times today. He no longer knew where to place his feet, who to trust or even whether he should trust at all. Scully was his foundation and that foundation had turned into a quagmire as she fought for her life.

"And if I say no?"

"Then you are a dead man. A struggle for power is going on inside the ranks of men accustomed to think of themselves as gods. Either you join me or you become a luxury neither side can afford." Jason laid out the brutal facts of life and death in the Project. 

Mulder thought about what Jason had said and even more about the things he had not said. Jason was offering him a chance to fight back, to maybe gain some justice for the victims of the Project, but not ultimate justice. Was it worth it? He didn't know. He did know that he wanted someone to pay for what they did to Scully. If he refused, he suspected he would be dead in a day or so. With him dead, there was no reason to remand Scully's death and Skinner would be left in thrall without hope or reason.

It wasn't any easier the second time, but Mulder did not see any choice. 

"I agree, but if I can take down the Project, I will," Mulder warned staring Jason straight in the eyes.

"Fair enough. However, you might find yourself going down with it. Still, you have a right to try and I really wouldn't expect anything less from you," Jason replied evenly. He stood up and, on impulse, stretched out his hand to Mulder. "By the way, my name is Jason. I think we are going to get to know each other very well in the next few years." This incandescent young man touched a part of him he thought had died on a dark bridge four years ago.

Mulder looked at the hand, glaring defiantly as he shoved his hands in his jacket pockets. Just as he was turning away, he stopped and stared up at the brightly blazing hospital windows overlooking the garden before reluctantly raising his right hand to touch Jason's. He recoiled before Jason could grip the hand, but Jason nodded his understanding.

"Oh, by the way, you might want to give Dr. Anthony Walker a call when Agent Scully recovers from the gunshot wound, as I'm sure she will. I hear he is quite an authority on her type of cancer." Jason hid his smile at the flash of hope that changed Mulder's eyes from dull brownish-green to a light sparkling sea green.

"I am not a harsh taskmaster, Fox. You will hear from me from time to time. In the meantime you are free to pursue whatever avenues you choose. Feel free to tell Mr. Skinner that his duties will be substantially changed in the future. I am not going to harness a thoroughbred to a plow." Jason smiled at his own analogy. This unholy alliance he was forging had enormous potential for raising all of them as high as their dreams could imagine or thrusting them into anonymous graves. Either way, they had no choice now but to try.

Mulder started to turn and leave. "I haven't finished," Jason said. He saw Mulder's shoulders stiffen as he felt the leash tighten. Just one last tug, Fox, Jason promised silently, and then you're free to hunt on your own until I need you.

Mulder turned and stood silently, glowering, but acknowledging Jason's right to call him up short. He hated the feel of the bit, but he wasn't stupid enough to fight unnecessarily, yet. If his obedience was required to protect Scully and Skinner then he could be very obedient, if not completely happy about it.

"If you want the advice of an older man, tell Scully everything. If she walks away, I promise, she will always be under my protection and you will be better off knowing at the beginning. However, if she decides to stay, I will consider that decision to be of her own free will. Two souls are quite enough for me. I have no desire for hers as well," Jason assured Mulder. Besides, Jason thought, if she stays, as I think she will, then your soul is enough to bind her to my purpose even more securely than if I had tried to barter for hers. I think the price for her soul would be more than I could pay, he conceded with the respect one soldier showed another.

Mulder growled something under his breath, but not loud enough for Jason to hear. Jason's words were cold comfort. He knew he would tell Scully about the deal. If she was smart, she would leave him, but he had this sinking feeling she was going to stay with him and try to win his soul back. Jason and Scully in a tug-of-war over his soul - the image was daunting. Mulder had a feeling his future was going to be extremely uncomfortable.

Released, Mulder hurried back to Scully's bedside. Jason stepped back into the shadows and pondered how best to use his new hawks to bring down the men who had declared war on him. 

"We're all together, just as you predicted, old friend," Jason whispered to Jonathan's ghost. "You knew. All along you knew and you never told us. Always one for keeping your little secrets." 

***************

Dawn 30 hours later - Scully's room

 

Mulder leaned back in the oddly comfortable rocking chair and stretched the muscles in his back and neck until he could hear the vertebrae pop. The chair had appeared as if by magic an hour after he had returned to stand outside Scully's room. The duty nurse shrugged and simply said that someone higher up had authorized it. At this point, Mulder wasn't sure whether he had Jason to thank, Skinner or some unknown, but kind-hearted hospital administrator. Maybe the staff had simply grown tired of seeing him pressed against the window to Scully's room and quietly arranged to get him out of their way. Whoever was responsible had his undying gratitude.

Occasionally, during his long vigil, Mulder had seen the agents Skinner had left on duty pacing outside the room like stern hallway monitors. There was a brief flurry of contention when the shifts changed and each new nurse had to be personally checked out, but Mulder left the furor in Skinner's capable hands. He had more important things to do - like persuading Scully not to ditch him.

She was so still. He kept reaching out to touch her hand, to reassure himself that she was still alive, still with him. Each time he hoped that at his touch her eyes would flutter open and she would be back. She was somewhere very far away and he could not find her.

He had passed beyond bargaining with heaven or hell for her life. Besides, he had nothing to offer that had not been offered before with no response. If she wished to return, then nothing in heaven or hell could stand in her way. Mulder did not think that an army of angels could stand up against a determined Scully. If she was lingering in that gray area between life and death, then it was because she was torn between the serene peace death offered, the assurance her faith gave of a heavenly reward, and the soul-wracking frustration he and his quest offered.

Finally, just before four a.m., nearly thirty hours since the shooting, he laid his head down on the side of the bed and slept, cradling her hand against his face, holding on for dear life. Asleep within moments, he did not feel her hand shift in his until her palm cupped his cheek. As he slept, she slipped from coma into sleep and dreamed of him and with him.

An hour later he woke up as the duty nurse moved around him checking the machines that beeped constant reminders that Scully was still alive. Satisfied, she left as silently as she came in. He felt the heavy stubble on his cheeks rub against Scully's palm and tried to remember when he had fallen asleep. She looked almost translucent to his sleep blurred eyes. Something of the netherworld clung to her and he was afraid she was slipping away from him. Tentatively he raised his hand to touch her face, but pulled it back, afraid to disturb whatever peace she had found.

Mulder shifted back in the chair, letting his head thump lightly against the back, as he returned to his vigil. The smell of hot coffee hit him with a slap. Without turning his eyes away from Scully's face, he reached out and grasped the Styrofoam cup placed in his hand.

"I've eaten better C-rations than what passes for food here, but I want to hire the man who makes their coffee," Skinner said with a tired groan as he settled into a hard wooden chair shoved in the corner of the room.

"Hmmmm," Mulder mumbled as he cautiously sipped the rich, dark brew, waiting for the jolt as the caffeine hit his system. In spite of his intense focus on Scully, he had been grateful for the solid reassurance of Skinner's quiet presence throughout the long hours he had spent at her side. Skinner had been the only one he trusted to watch over her when he was forced to take a necessary break.

Once Skinner had accepted Mulder's refusal to leave, he had kept him supplied with coffee. Finding Mulder asleep on his last round, Skinner had gladly drunk both cups of coffee. Right now he was running on nerves and caffeine, but he wouldn't allow himself to rest until Scully was out of danger and Mulder did not need to be reminded not to hurl himself into self-destruction. Mulder's face sagged with exhaustion, but his eyes burned with the dark fires of vengeance that worried him.

"Hey partner . . .," a small voice shattered the silence. 

Mulder froze. Hot coffee splattered as his fist crushed the cup. Part of him noted for future reference that he had just been scalded in some very tender spots, but for now his entire being was caught up in a miracle.

Skinner held his breath, almost afraid to believe he had heard anything. He had moved beyond exhaustion about four hours ago. Hearing voices was one sign of extreme exhaustion, that much he remembered from 'Nam. He prayed that this wasn't some cruel hallucination. Mulder couldn't take much more and he knew he was close to the edge himself.

"You look terrible," the voice continued, slightly stronger this time, filled with amused tolerance and contentment.

Mulder swallowed twice, trying to find his voice, then gave up. With a mingled sob and groan he leaned forward and laid his head in Scully's lap, anointing her with his tears. Straining with the effort to move leaden limbs, Scully slowly raised her hand and let it drop on Mulder's head, fingers lightly smoothing his hair as she made soothing whispers of reassurance.

Scully was smiling down at Mulder; a sad, soft smile that acknowledged sorrow, betrayal and future pain. There was also immense understanding of and love for the man shuddering with relief under her hand. 

Skinner stood to go, feeling embarrassed at his intrusion into this intimate act of reunion. Scully lifted her eyes to his as the chair creaked under his shifting weight. Skinner was captured by the serenity and resolve that shone out of eyes that still looked into the world beyond. Scully nodded once, mouthing 'thank you' to him as she turned back to her partner who was raising his head at last to look at her.

Walking quietly into the hall, Skinner felt the odd sense that he had been given absolution by the only person who could give it. Looking out the window at the rising sun, Skinner felt the second of his lives slip into the dark waters of the past. How many lives did he have left? For that matter, how many lives did any of them have left? They had pushed the odds far beyond all reason, yet miracles still kept bringing them back into the fight. They had no right to expect their luck to hold, yet he couldn't help believing that it would.

He knew that any time they beat the odds was cause for celebration. Too tired to even rejoice, he indulged in the rare luxury of simply watching the sun come up with no agenda or urgency beyond the calm wonder of seeing another day begin. 

'But I've a rendezvous with Death.' The words formed out of the shadows of his memory, a poet writing of his own fate in war, whose words had haunted him throughout the hell of 'Nam. 'And I to my pledged word am true, I shall not fail that rendezvous.' 

As the dawn turned into daylight and the bustle of the hospital swirled around him, Skinner stood sentry over the reunion of two soldiers in this latest war, a war fought in darkness and without fanfare. There were no victors in this war, just survivors, but he intended to see to it that even if no one else was left standing, the two he had just left would survive.

*********

Still unable to speak, Mulder poured his heart and soul into his eyes as a shy, tremulous grin lit up his face. They had wrenched another miracle out of fate's hands. Words were beyond him. There were no words to describe his gratitude to whoever or whatever watched over Scully and brought her safely back to him.

Scully watched the sun dawning in Mulder's eyes as it banished the chill of her dalliance with death. If she did nothing else in the short time left to her, she intended to make this incredible man realize his own worth. She was a woman with a mission. Mulder held himself too cheaply. It was time he saw himself through her eyes. His need had drawn her back into life. For too long she had drawn strength from his stubborn faith in her and in the possibility of a cure. Now it was time she gave some of that faith back to him before she had to leave him alone for good.

"Mulder," she spoke his name with a tenderness meant to capture his attention. Liquid eyes bored into her and she had to resist the urge to drown in the passion she saw swimming in their depths.

"You haven't slept, have you?" she chided him with a smile.

Mulder shrugged and absently rubbed the stubble on his cheeks that was bordering on a young beard. 

"You can tell?" he quipped back - lame, but at least he got the words past the lump in his throat.

"I'm a trained investigator, Mulder," she responded in kind, basking in the warmth of their familiar repartee.

"I'm back now and I don't intend on going anywhere, so go home and get some sleep. We haven't finished that talk we were having and I don't want you falling asleep before I talk you out of this insane plan of yours," she admonished with mock sternness as she lightly traced his jaw-line. Her body felt the thrumming response Mulder made to this advance. Suddenly a whole new host of extreme possibilities opened up in front of her. 

"Scully..."

"Later, Mulder. Get some sleep. You're swaying. I'm getting dizzy watching you try to sit upright." Scully brought her other hand up to cup his face and leaned forward until their foreheads touched. A chaste act with overtones of passionate intimacy that left them flushed and breathing hard. 

A loud raucous buzz exploded in the silence and they pulled back in startled alarm. Two nurses and a resident burst into the room prepared for the worse. Mulder glared at the heart monitor then gave Scully a rueful grin. He allowed the nurses to shoulder him out of the way as they hovered over a flushed Scully who was losing the battle not to laugh. Skinner's appearance blew the last of her self-control and she dissolved into chuckles as she tried to reassure the nurses that she was fine.

Mulder gave the perplexed Skinner a shrug and a smile before he grabbed one of Scully's hands, squeezed it and mouthed 'later.' Knowing hospitals as well as he did, Scully was going to be completely occupied for at least the next couple of hours. He didn't think he could sleep, but he figured he could lie down for a couple of hours so he could honestly tell Scully that he tried.

"Sir, you were telling me about a spare room where I could sack out for a few hours?" Mulder commented as he walked out into the hallway and noted how bright the day looked.

**********

Later that day

 

"Hey, moving up in the world, partner," Mulder said as he walked into Scully's new room five hours later. Contrary to his expectations, he had fallen asleep almost immediately and logged in a solid four hours sleep. Thanks to a shower, a shave and fresh clothes he felt that he might just pass muster.

"Still the same old food, though," Scully shot back as she contemplated the consequences of rebelling, just once in her life, against clear broth and Jell-O. "Hungry, Mulder?" she asked mischievously.

"Nah, I've had my quota of Jell-O for the year. It's your turn," he retorted as he grabbed a lumpy chair and pulled it over to the side of the bed. As he tried to fit his body between the lumps, he wondered if he could track down the rocker and hijack it.

"You got some sleep," Scully said with relief. Mulder looked tired, but the glassy sheen of exhaustion was gone from his eyes. She realized that she missed the stubble. It gave him a dangerous, don't-bring-home-to-mama look that definitely opened up some very tempting possibilities. 

"Yeah, some," he assured her. Biting his lip, he looked down at his shoes, trying to brace himself for the talk he knew was coming. She was too late to save him and somehow he had to make her understand. 

"Mulder, don't you dare feel guilty for not being dead," Scully snapped sternly. Mulder's head came up and she was startled to see surprise in his eyes.

"Actually, I've already had that lecture from Skinner. You were unconscious for so long, I guess he figured somebody had to do it," Mulder said with a resigned shrug.

"Then what..."

"Well, as I recall our last conversation, before you took a bullet meant for me, you were saying something about me not taking the deal," Mulder paused as Scully quickly shifted gears from her planned lecture and remembered the interrupted discussion. At her nod, he continued. This honesty routine was not coming easy for him but he wanted to lay everything out on the table before crawling back inside his barriers.

"It's too late, Scully. I'm bought and paid for. The good news is that part of the price is a cure for you. The bad news is that if I try to back out now, I have a choice of being shot by the Consortium or by Jason."

Scully was frowning now. "Who..."

"Jason's the man who holds the other end of my leash," Mulder shrugged and gave a sad smile. "Actually, he isn't as bad as I expected. He has his own agenda after the other night. Seems the Consortium went mad and issued hits on several people, including Jason and a friend of his. If I can believe him, then I'm pretty much back where I started, with him as my informant. I told him I'd take him and the Consortium down if I could. He laughed and told me to go ahead and try." Mulder sounded faintly insulted.

"He's lying to you," Scully interjected. She was determined to remain calm despite the urge to shake Mulder until he came to his senses.

"Possibly. What else is new? I was weaned on lies, Scully. I'll have to wait and see. I think he was telling the truth about your cure. Take it. Make something good come out of this deal," Mulder pleaded. He refused to bolster his arguments with physical contact, but his eyes begged her to take the chance to live.

"They'll keep using me, then. I won't be a pawn to be used against you," Scully argued, angry at the men who used her to destroy the one man who dared stand in their way.

"You've got it all wrong, Scully. You're no pawn. You're the only reason I even made it this far. Without you, I'm the pawn, their pawn. You've validated me. You have given me faith to believe in miracles and offered me the solid rock of your integrity as a person and as a scientist to put my back against," Mulder said passionately, his soul spinning the words out of his need to make her understand how much she meant to him.

Flushed by his outburst, he laid his hand over hers, smiling as she grabbed hold and squeezed. Such a tiny hand, almost lost in his larger one, yet he never seemed to think of her as anything less than a giant towering over lesser men.

"Mulder..." For once, Scully was at a loss for words. While she understood that Mulder loved her, she had never once realized how much he also admired and respected her. Love suddenly seemed to be the easier emotion to deal with. 

"No, listen just a moment longer, then I'll shut up and give you a chance to tell me I'm wrong," Mulder admonished with a sly smile.

"The deal is made. I think Jason is right - if I back out now, I'm a dead man. At least this gives me a chance to fight back . . . and you a chance to live. Sounds like a pretty fair bargain to me." Mulder didn't smile. Scully needed to know with absolute certainty that he was dead serious.

Mulder's eyes told her all she needed to know - a desperate need/fear for her life combined with a grim awareness of what this deal would cost him. Mulder had entered this deal fully aware of the price. This was not like any of his other forays into forbidden territory which were as much a boy's reckless belief in his own invincibility as all-consuming drives for the truth. This was a man's decision, made with a man's heart and a man's acceptance of the consequences. What a hell of a time for Mulder to finally grow up, she thought irritably. 

"I'm not leaving you alone in this, Mulder," Scully responded with steel in her voice. She was pleased to see him flinch just a bit. 

"If you had any common sense at all, you'd walk away from me just as fast and as far as you could."

"Well, I think whether I have any common sense was settled a long time ago and the answer is no - not where you are concerned. I am not going to stand by and watch you become everything you hate. My life isn't worth that much," she snapped.

"You're not going to refuse..." Mulder stopped, trying to regain control of his voice which deserted him along with his composure at the thought that Scully might refuse the cure.

"No," Scully said with a softening of her tone. "No, I'll take the cure. I'm selfish enough to want to live, if for no other reason than to keep you from making any more idiotic deals."

Scully watched fear, relief, hope, and regret chase themselves across Mulder's expressive face until only relief was left. He wasn't the only one who couldn't bear to imagine life without the other. Someday she hoped she could make him understand that she wasn’t being noble; she was simply unable to walk away from the life they had created. However precarious, however insular, this was the life she chose and would fight for with every ounce of her stubborn Irish will.

"Besides, someone has to stick around to haul your ass out of the fire, partner," she added with a glint in her eye that brooked no argument and a smile to let him know she had every intention of picking up where she left off.

"Can't imagine anyone else I'd rather have hauling my ass," Mulder quipped. His eyes were sad as he realized that Jason was right, Scully wasn't going to abandon him no matter what. He didn't know why she stuck around, but he hoped one day maybe they could talk about that as well.

*********

Standing in his friend's smoke-drenched office, Jason stared down at the empty chessboard. Slowly, almost reverently, he began to replace the scattered chessmen. The black side was missing two bishops, a rook and over half its pawns. The pawns were expendable, but he suspected that the Elders would soon feel the gap left by his and his friend's exile. Overtures would be made, responsibility for a gross act of individual initiative passed on to a dead man and the strayed sheep would be welcomed back to the fold. The Elders were fools to trust men they tried to have killed, but fools were very useful things to have in this game of secrets and lies.

On the opposite side of the board, the ranks of the white king betrayed a strange new alliance. Jason wished the board could reflect the new hierarchy that had hatched in a dark garden at the cusp of midnight. Light and dark mixed together in no arrangement known to modern chess. Mulder's white king stood in the bishop's square with the white queen at his right hand. Two black bishops sat in the royal squares holding court over this new order. A black rook guarded their left flank while a white bishop flanked by two knights and a rook protected the king and queen. 

New rules. A new game. Jason smiled as he pondered the possibilities in this new power structure. He raised a glass of amber whiskey in a toast to the gods of dark ambitions he had followed for nearly fifty years.

"I brought him in. I have bound him to our purpose with chains he cannot break."

In the shadows he stood, casting his shadow over the white king and his allies. It was time for the real game to begin.

 

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> Author's note: The fragment of poetry quoted by Skinner is Alan Seeger's "I Have A Rendezvous With Death."


End file.
